


all your perfect imperfections

by t_fic (topaz), topaz, topaz119 (topaz)



Series: Star Trek (all) works [6]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Break Up, Denial, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Families of Choice, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation, Recovery, Sort Of, Star Trek: Discovery Spoilers, TOS canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 92,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/t_fic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/topaz/pseuds/topaz119
Summary: OnceDiscoveryjumped to the future, everything seemed settled. Back to normal, or as close as that could be.Chris had theEnterprisefor now, no matter what the time crystal on Boreth had shown him. An unexpected call to Xahea wouldn't seem to be a life-altering event, but the thing about the future is that it’s always in motion--and sometimes it brings things that can hardly be believed.
Relationships: Christopher Pike & Spock, Christopher Pike/Sylvia Tilly, Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po & Sylvia Tilly, Number One & Christopher Pike, Philip Boyce & Christopher Pike
Series: Star Trek (all) works [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600957
Comments: 58
Kudos: 76





	1. 2266

Chris recognizes the engine room as soon as he walks in--How can he not? It's been in his dreams for nearly a decade now--but everything happens so quickly, he doesn't have time to do anything but what he's seen himself do ever since he reached out to the crystal. Once the first alarm sounds, there isn't any doubt or hesitation in his mind; even if he could have walked out before it all started, he wouldn't have. He does what the crystal has told him he'd do, which is, in its own way, a relief. A part of him has dreaded being put to the test and not living up to that vision, dreaded finding out that he's not the person who jumps to help no matter what, dreaded failing the kids under his watch by not being fast enough, strong enough, determined enough.

He can feel the Delta radiation blast starting to affect him even as he lunges for the last cadet, barely more than a minute after the rupture. He gets her clear, but then stumbles, all the strength in his legs draining out more quickly than he could have imagined, as he tries to follow.

 _Oh my god, you are seriously too damn stubborn_ , he hears Tilly saying in his mind and it's her he's reaching for as his body shuts down and he loses consciousness.


	2. 2258

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note that I tend to use Robbins (from an old tie-in graphic novel) as a surname for Number One (and I’m delighted we got an actual name for her this past season) and I figure she has to be at least a Commander by now, so that’s who that mystery officer is. :)

"Captain," Nicola calls from the Comms station. "I have a Priority Alpha, Eyes-Only hail from Starfleet Command coming in." And, just like that, the serenity of alpha shift on the _Enterprise_ 's bridge is shattered, at least in Chris' eyes.

He allows himself an exasperated quirk of an eyebrow as Una turns around from the helm, wordlessly asking her if it is really too much to expect a nice, quiet exploration of random space oddities, even if that's already their stated mission. Una arches an eyebrow back, which translates roughly to _Oh, you sweet summer fool_ , which is, unfortunately, the correct and only answer these days.

"I'll take it in the ready room," Chris says, standing up. "Number One, you have the conn."

*

"Captain," Commodore Rojas says, "We have a diplomatic… situation that we need your assistance with." It's a full house looking out at Chris from the vid screen. Beyond the commodore, he counts at least three admirals, twice that many captains, and a wide range of advisors, assistants and assorted underlings packing the situation room the comm's originating from.

"Situation, as in you need someone to be the face of Starfleet; or situation, as in we're on the edge of another war?" It's a little blunt, but the last few years have pushed a little too far to the chaotic side of the spectrum and Chris would like to have at least an inkling of an idea what he's flying his crew into this time.

"We're leaning toward the first option, but unfortunately we can't completely rule out the second." 

"Then I strongly suggest that you send an actual diplomat," Chris says, again with the blunt.

"I would strongly agree, Captain," Rojas answers, which is both a welcoming bluntness in return and a somewhat pointed reminder of his (decidedly junior) status in this situation. For Rojas, though, it's practically a compliment; her verbal shredding skills are unparalleled in the Fleet. Chris knows this better than most lowly captains because Una takes her as an inspiration. "I would absolutely be calling someone more traditionally qualified, except that the Xaheans are asking for you, by name—"

"Which means it's a non-negotiable demand," Chris fills in, wondering what in the seven fresh hells Her Serene Highness is in the middle of now.

"It does, especially when they're _also_ making carefully non-committal comments about their dilithium incubator technology."

Chris sighs. It's been a pleasant six months: a new moon, some fascinating wavelengths that Spock couldn't quite figure out, a few interesting encounters with various new species of flora and fauna; but duty, as always, trumps everything. "Please let the Xaheans know the _Enterprise_ will be changing course."

"Maximum warp, Chris," Rojas says.

"Maximum warp," Chris agrees.

*

"Are you sure you don't want Security?" Una asks one more time as Chris steps up onto the transporter pad.

"I've already let you talk me into dragging Spock into all this," Chris answers. Spock is working the Vulcan imperturbability and has so far ignored the back-and-forth between captain and first officer. "The Xaheans are--"

"Acting oddly, for all that we have good relations with them," Una points out.

"True," Chris concedes. "But I don't want to go in with a show of force. They asked for me; they'll get me."

Una flicks her eyes to Spock, who nods briefly. Chris suppresses a sigh. "Yes, please, more non-verbal conversations about how the Old Man is being difficult is exactly what I need today."

"Grumpy," Una says. "A bold move for a diplomatic mission, sir."

"Lieutenant," Chris calls over her head to the transporter operator. "Whenever you're ready."

"Give my regards to Her Highness," Una is saying as the transporter takes Chris. He re-materializes on the steps of the palace with the thought that the affection between Po and Una is definitely something he should have nipped in the bud. It's probably too late now, though, so he's going to have to figure out how to stay out of their sights a little better.

Nothing seems dangerously off as Chris and Spock are escorted to what looks to be a formal reception room, but Chris isn't getting a feeling of welcome, either. The Xaheans they pass are watching them, eyes following the Starfleet uniforms without blinking. In the reception room, a small knot of Xaheans are clustered at the end of the room, but they all melt away as the escort announces that the Starfleet personnel have arrived, leaving Po, dressed more formally than Chris is used to, standing alone and giving off a fairly regal vibe. When Chris gets closer though, he can still see the quick intelligence and utter disregard for rules and regulations dancing around her eyes.

"Your Serene Highness," Chris says, keeping everything but the formal politeness out of his voice.

"Captain!" Po answers, extending a hand for Chris to take, all very correct, except he can see where she knows everything he's not saying and is both amused and not at all dismissive about it. "Thank you for coming so quickly. Pass our official regards to Starfleet Command as well."

"Of course," Chris answers, flicking his eyes to Spock, who would also seem to agree that there is more going on than what's being presented on the surface.

"So, I know we're supposed to spend time on the social niceties, but let's go ahead and cut to the chase," Po says. She smiles at all the Xaheans clustered around; Chris counts several resigned expressions and one or two of the crowd who are unsuccessfully hiding smiles. "They'll tell you I think better while I'm moving, so let's walk."

Chris inclines his head, but doesn't say anything beyond a murmured, "Of course." Her Serene Highness, Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po thinks better than the vast majority of the galaxy even when she's asleep, so there's definitely something up. Spock arches one eyebrow fractionally, which Chris takes as agreement that whatever it is, they need to know.

"Hi, Spock," she says as she lets Chris offer an arm. "Sorry, I only need the captain right now." 

"Of course, Your Highness," Spock answers. "I will take my ease here and await your return." It's a pretty pointed comment for a diplomatic mission, but Spock looks unrepentant. Chris manages somehow not to sigh. His command team and their mother-henning are going to drive him insane at some point. He's sure of it.

"Yep," Po answers. "I promise to bring him back." She grins at Spock, and Chris can almost hear the _check and mate_ hanging in the air. "You can check out the star map on the ceiling. It's old, so you can see the shift over the centuries."

"Fascinating," Spock answers politely, but everybody gets the point that Spock is also known to the queen and shouldn't be messed with. 

"The captain and I are probably stopping by the science wing, too," Po says, just loudly enough for people to overhear. "I want him to see the incubator."

"I'd be honored," Chris says, falling into step with her. A squad of personal guards follow along behind them, which is hardly surprising given that Chris has hands on their queen. He's prepared with a full slate of innocuous small talk, but Po doesn't bother with any chatter, merely leads Chris through halls with vaulted ceilings and intricate mosaics on the walls and floors until they come to a heavily carved door and the guards take up positions next to it, clearly not accompanying them further.

Once they're inside and the door is closed, Po takes his arm and lays one finger across her lips in the old sign to be quiet. Chris barely has time to wonder where exactly a Xahean picked up an old Earth gesture, when Po is dragging him through another door and an unexpected but still familiar figure with a cloud of red curls looks up from the chair where she's reading through a PADD and smiles an uncertain but also still familiar smile.

Chris stares back, looks to where Po is practically vibrating out of her formal court dress, and then back to the first woman again.

"Um, hi -- from the future...?" Sylvia Tilly says, "or, maybe that should be 'future greetings'...? Which I realize is not nearly as much fun as a time rift, but that's what we're working with, sorry." She waves awkwardly and looks like she's trying not to wring her hands, and whatever Chris had expected, however odd every communication from Xahea had been, he still hadn't even begun to see this coming, and frankly, he could really use a drink.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Did we break him?" Po's hissed question maybe comes a little too close to a very valid fear Tilly _might_ have been harboring, but she sucks up a good attitude and scoffs back, "Admiral Cornwell's Best of Starfleet? Please."

Captain Pike obviously hears, too, shaking his head as he says, "I'm… fine, ladies. You just caught me a little flat-footed, that's all."

"Sorry for all the drama," Tilly says, giving him her best _No, really, sir, I can explain / Science is awesome_ nod. "We needed to be sure it was _you_ that came, because Po says Starfleet kind of thinks that we didn't make it out of that fight with Control so that left you, and Saru's sister and L'Rell and Tyler that I could contact, and believe me, sir, when I say that you are so far in the lead of that group that it's not even like a contest."

"Thank you," Pike says with a very dry quirk of a smile; and Tilly grins back at at him, because this whole thing might be a total clusterfuck, but he is still the best captain ever and his voice absolutely does feel like home, however unprofessional that thought might be. "It's always nice to know my previous crew isn't running full speed in the other direction when my name comes up."

"Totally not a thing, sir," Tilly says, and then, because she does know how his brain works, and knows he's really, seriously going to want answers, plunges on in with the explanations, such as they are. "Yeah, so, everything is okay; well, I mean, obviously not _totally_ okay, because, yeah, here I am, not so much in the future, but even that's like a fail-safe, so there might have been weirdnesses, but Plan B totally worked and--"

"Breathe, Ensign," Pike says, and Tilly gulps in a breath and settles herself down. She's not usually so scattered these days, but, well, here she is and life is suddenly even weirder than it had been when she'd jumped nearly a millennium outside of time with the ship. Seeing Pike, still calm and in command, is maybe a little bit more of a relief than she might have been expecting.

"Sorry," she says again. "So, yeah, you got the seventh signal, right?" Pike nods, and Tilly nods along with him. "Yeah, we got there and the future is… the future; we probably shouldn't talk about that so we don't do weird things to the timeline, kind of a reverse Prime Directive--not that I actually know anything much, I mean, you know me, if there's a lab, I'm in it--" 

Pike is starting to get that look in his eyes that says Tilly's losing it again, so she takes another deep breath and tells her brain to get with it. 

"Everybody's okay--I mean, I'm not here because the future blew up or anything-- We were experimenting with fabricating a new suit, because--of reasons, and the DNA coding is trickier than we thought--we really lucked out with the suit relying on Michael's genetic connection to her mom when we did the fabrication before the jump, sir, like totally, _totally_ lucked out--so we were using my DNA, because we couldn't tell what was a solution and what was just working because of, you know, the mitochondrial DNA connection." 

She stops for a second and then honesty compels her to add, "And because, well, I was completely geeking out and I think Commander Saru kinda wanted me out of his hair. You know, metaphorically speaking."

She's being a hopeless nerd again, but Pike is smiling at her like he always had, and that is so, _so_ nice that Tilly isn't going to look too closely about why it feels so good, but just hurries along. "And one of the things we did was set a bunch of fall-back positions on the suit in the space-time-continuum, using coordinates in the mycelial network, and this was my um, third set of coordinates, and I guess there was an issue, because here I am." Even thinking about the malfunction kind of makes her nauseated. "I don't actually remember much past the first jump we tried."

"The suit is pretty much gone," Po says. "And the crystal… it's dust."

"Yeah, it was kind of a wild ride," Tilly says, which is, like, the understatement of her life, and that includes getting sucked into the mycelial plane _and_ finding out she was a homicidal maniac as a Terran. "I was, um, really happy when I woke up here." 

She'd clung to Po and had been halfway to shaking her teeth out of her head, but yeah, 'happy', covers that, too. 

"All right," Captain Pike says calmly. "So, you're here, and you don't seem to be suffering any physical issues from the suit malfunction…" He ends that on an interrogatory inflection, and even though Tilly nods, he asks Po, "How much experience do your medical teams have with humans?" 

"Mostly theoretical," Po answers. "But Til's readings checked out okay against the reference databases."

"I'd feel better if I got Phil down here," Pike says. "Or at least one of his scanners so he can take a look and keep up plausible deniability." He turns back to Tilly. "That would be Dr. Boyce, my CMO. I can promise his complete discretion."

Tilly doesn't care--like she's going to have an issue with somebody Captain Bold-Brave-and-Courageous trusts--and she feels fine, if a little lost and alone even with Po taking care of her, but it seems like not a terrible idea to have somebody who's used to Earth people taking a look at her read-outs. In the end, Pike decides Boyce is going to find out everything anyway, so they might as well get his opinion first-hand. He comms Spock, who arrives with barely an eyebrow arch at seeing Tilly, and then Pike sends them off to meet up with the doctor while Pike stays back to strategize with Po. It's okay, though, because Spock is doing his best _Emotions are invalid, but please tell me everything about my sister_ Vulcan interrogation and it kinda feels like home.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Well, the main problem I'm seeing," Chris says slowly, nursing a glass of what is apparently Xahea's finest distilled liquor, of which he'd taken a single sip and known it was going to knock him on his ass if he wasn't careful, "is that your insistence on getting me here has tripped all kinds of alarms at Command, to the point that they're not sure if you're going to raise the Romulans just to align with them, so I'm going to need a damn good excuse for why it was me you needed to see."

"Oh, that's no problem," Po says, perching herself cross-legged on one of the work tables in the room. Her court dress has been discarded in favor of some practical leggings and boots and she's pulled her hair back into a long ponytail that bares the intricate markings on her neck and shoulders. "The idiot admiral who's been assigned to work with us is--" The universal translator loses its place as she spits out a long stream of aggravated clicks and hisses.

"That good, huh?" Chris sighs. He's never wanted to be anything other than Starfleet, not from the time he was old enough to understand that people could fly through the stars, but there are times when he absolutely does not _understand_ the politics that lead to perfectly functional inter-planetary relationships being put at risk to give some old fool a diplomatic post on his way to retirement.

"Yep," Po says. "You can tell the Federation they're at risk of losing any discussion of the incubator technology and it won't even be stretching the truth."

"I'm sorry," Chris says. "Not all of the Federation is like that."

"Yeah, well, I know that because I know Tilly and I know you," Po says. "And I'm willing to maybe talk to a team if you're involved with it, but I'm actually not sure about that right now."

"You should have contacted me earlier," Chris says seriously. "I would have tried to--"

"No, I know," Po says. "I just wanted to be sure I wasn't being… young, and not sure of what I was doing." Her eyes flash as she blinks. "I should have stopped talking to this team months ago, but now I'm glad, because we have a pretty good reason for you to be here."

Tilly comes back with a clean bill of health from Phil, which sends a surprising surge of relief through Chris. Of course, Chris can acknowledge that he's been more than a little… uneven, emotionally speaking, since he'd gone and gotten the time crystal they needed. Apparently, the way he's dealt with that has been to more-or-less shut down a lot of extraneous emotions, because getting good news about the health of a former crew member probably shouldn't be quite this much of a dopamine hit.

When Po tells her that Chris will be picking up liaison duties, Tilly does a fist pump that wouldn't have been out of place in one of the more testosterone-laden sections of a starship, and then spins around to give Chris a high-five. 

"Perfect," Tilly is saying. " _Perfect_. The idiot she's been dealing with is this annoying toxic brew of xenophobia and toootal sexism. You, sir, are going to be so much better."

"Thank goodness," Chris deadpans. "I was a little concerned I wasn't going to be able to clear that bar." He manages not to smile as Tilly realizes the unintended insult and claps her hand over her mouth--but it's close.

"I mean, of _course_ you're going to be better, that's not a surprise in any way, is it, Po?"

Po is playing along and is projecting a very good regal presence, but it's going to break down soon, so Chris takes pity on her and laughs first. "Kidding, Tilly," he says.

"Again?!" Tilly does a beautiful mock-swoon. "Sir, there really has to be some kind of regulation about teasing your junior officers. Spock will back me up on this, right?" She spins to Spock who looks faintly bemused at being included in the joke. 

"One would think so," Spock says, "but unfortunately, I have yet to find such a thing."

"Probably because most captains are too caught up in how important they are," Tilly says, and Chris absolutely cannot resist running with that one.

"Also good to know I'm not important," he teases. 

"You!" Tilly points at him, the picture of indignant righteousness except for how she's laughing, a bright, happy sound that invites Chris' participation, too. "You are terrible. How did I not know this before?"

"Years of practice, Ensign."

"Ugh, and here I thought we were bringing you here for wisdom, not shenanigans."

"Only for my favorites," Chris says, which fits the mood, but also, he thinks, happens to be very true. Along with being a talented, smart addition to the junior officers' corps on _Discovery_ , Tilly had added a bright spark of warmth and compassion that's rare to find and, even with the continuing complications, Chris is surprisingly glad to see her again, all disasters notwithstanding.

"Shenanigans aside," he says, bringing his focus back to the situation at hand, "we should probably address the ramifications of your being back in this time."

❦ ❦ ❦ 

Tilly is kinda sad to have to stop with fun bit of teasing, but he's right--which is also why they'd contrived to drag him into all this, so she nods and says, "Well, I'm here, with a totally jacked suit, and all the schematics and designs are back on _Discovery_ , so fire away, sir."

He seems almost apologetic as he says, "I'm not entirely sure how we can put forward your existence given the… narrative we supplied after your jump."

"Why would we need to give out a reason?" Tilly asks blankly. She's missing something big, judging from that very patient look in his eyes. "I mean, Po knows what actually happened, so we're good, right?"

"That would imply your staying here," Pike says. "Permanently."

"Yeah?" Tilly answers, still not getting it. Seeing Pike and Spock must really be knocking her off her game. She turns to Po. "That's okay, right?"

"Of course," Po says, and she seems as baffled as Tilly, which is at least a little bit of a relief. 

"And that's alright with you?" Pike asks, clearly in full diplomatic mode, which is kinda frustrating even if he is being his usual super-thoughtful self about the situation.

"Yes?" Tilly shakes her head. Pike starts to answer, but he's still got that patient, explaining look in his eyes; and Tilly's mouth leaps forward without, as it so often does, consulting the protocol section of her brain. "Okay, I appreciate the incredible levels of tact and diplomacy happening here, but can you just spit it out, whatever it is?" 

She has no idea what the translator made of that last part, but Po covers up a laugh with a not-very convincing cough. Of course, it could be that Tilly just told a Starfleet captain she isn't impressed with his verbal skills, so she tacks on a belated, "Sir."

"Thank you," Pike says, dry and amused, which is still as fun to hear as it had been on the bridge. "I was trying to ask if you'd thought through not returning to the life you had."

"I mean, I kinda did when we jumped," Tilly says. "I made the choice to go, and just because I'm back here now doesn't mean I'm expecting to go pick up a new assignment and pretend like nothing's happened." Actually, the more she thinks about it, the more sure she is. "The Sphere data is still vitally important--I'm not going to risk that just to get back on a ship," she says, her voice getting louder with every word. "Not to mention, trashing your career--and Spock's and Commander Robbins'-- or destabilizing L'Rell's councilorship, or, or--ugh, they'd probably yank Tyler out of Section 31 and who knows what idiot they'd put in there--

"At ease, Ensign," Pike says, and yeah, okay, Tilly had been going off a little there. She channels Michael at her most calm and logical and takes a deep cleansing breath. Pike says, "I appreciate your assessment of the situation--which is sound, as I'm sure Spock will second--" Spock's nodding when Tilly looks over at him, but then Pike says, "But I do need you to take some time with your own personal situation. This is different than going in with your crew, your family. If staying here is not going to work, we _will_ find a way to make alternate arrangements that won't destroy careers or destabilize empires."

It's a very Pike thing to say, Tilly thinks, which also means that she should probably do exactly what he's saying and think about it a little more. The thing is, the first thing that pops into her brain is also a very Pike thing, from the day they'd jumped through the wormhole in _Discovery_ , when Control was raining hell down on them and Tilly was running for the bridge and really, seriously not knowing if she was going to make it out of the day alive. And in the middle of all that, there was Pike's voice on ship-to-ship comms laying out the situation and how they were going to deal with it and ending with _This is Starfleet. Get it done._

For all of this weirdness, Tilly still is Starfleet and she will get it done. 

"I'm good here, sir," Tilly says. "But thank you for checking in with me." She thinks she manages to say that without an embarrassing amount of hero worship, but c'mon, she can't blame herself even if she hasn't.

"Of course, Ensign," Pike says, as if there's no other way to be. That's very Pike, too, and Tilly is so amazingly glad they've been able to read him into this mess. Other than figuring out a way back to _Discovery_ , this is the best resolution she could have dreamed up.

❦ ❦ ❦ 

Po makes a point to walk Chris and Spock back to where _Enterprise_ 's transporter can pick them up, to make sure everyone on her side knows that she, personally, hasn't given up on the negotiations yet. Since that also means there's a full complement of security, the only conversation is the most banal of small talk, at least until Spock is ready to call up and Chris makes a point to tell Po that he'll be relaying her concerns and discontent with the current negotiating team to the Federation and that he expects there to be a change once he does.

"Thank you, Captain," she says almost formally, before leaning closer to add quietly, "for everything. No big surprise, but everything looks a lot less doom-and-gloom since you arrived." 

"I'll do my best," Chris promises, and steps back to let the transporter get a lock. As soon as he's back on the _Enterprise_ , he comms Una from the transporter room so that she's waiting for him by the time he gets to the ready room with Spock. 

"See?" he says as he comes in the door. "No random attacks." 

"I stand corrected," she says mildly. "You do seem a little more energetic than might be expected after a simple meet-and-greet diplomatic mission, so please, feel free to tell me what might have brought this on."

"Well," Chris says thoughtfully, crossing the room to pour a little bourbon to chase the Xahean liquor, "we're probably going to be on diplomatic duty for the foreseeable future."

"And yet you're not grumping around the decks about it," Una answers, holding a glass out for a taste of her own. Chris pours generously, because the next part is still a little hard to process. Spock, unsurprisingly, declines, but Chris keeps some of the Vulcan fruit waters he likes stashed in the cabinet, so he's good there, too.

"I'm saving the aggravation for whoever looked at Xahea and its queen and thought they could dump some idiot on the most delicate negotiations in the galaxy. I'll try to limit any collateral damage here."

"We appreciate that, don't we, Spock," Una says.

"Indeed, Number One."

"But that's not all, is it?" She turns back to Chris. "At least, I hope you didn't have Phil beam down for tea and cakes with the queen?"

"And that's where it gets even more interesting," Chris says, not at all surprised that she's picked up on all the bits and pieces. He fills her in on Tilly's appearance and the tentative plan going forward.

"Well, that explains a lot," Una murmurs when he's done. It's that thoughtful, amused tone she sometimes takes when people are being emotional in her presence. Spock tends to miss those kind of cues, but Una, while the most logical human Chris has ever met, can read them even if she's not ever going to be taking anyone up on them. 

He arches an eyebrow at her, and she arches one back, which roughly translates to her being happy to explain but only if he's braced for the blunt truth. There's also the unspoken opinion that goes along with her having said anything out loud in the first place, the one that says that she definitely thinks he needs to hear what she has to say, but that he's not so far gone as to make her actually say that part out loud, too.

"Bring it on, Number One," Chris says, because she's almost always right in these sorts of situations.

"You've been very distracted since we completed the Red Angel mission," Una says without so much as a break to take a breath. "Not so much that it's affecting your decisions on the bridge, but enough that I'd begun to have concerns that we were heading in that direction. Having a situation of high importance that also affects people you've placed under your protection dropped in your lap could be, if you'll allow it, the perfect antidote to that."

Chris likes how she gets that point in there about how he's possibly still too unaware to take advantage of a perfect solution, but she wouldn't be Number One without that little edge.

"Any concerns?"

"Po has her family and planet to watch over--for all her youth, she has good support. Ensign Tilly, on the other hand, is balancing on a very fine edge. Her determination to do the right thing is admirable, but it's still a hard path to walk without support."

"Welcome to the second reason I'm not raging around about being dropped into a diplomatic quagmire. We'll be around for Tilly."

"I was hoping you'd realized that," Una says, tossing back the rest of her bourbon in a single go and turning to shepherd Spock out and leave. "Now, go get Rojas and tell her what she needs to know."

"On it," Chris says, tapping the link to the Comms station on the bridge. "This is Captain Pike. Who do I have on Comms tonight?"

The assigned gamma shift officer is out on maternity leave; Chris probably should know her replacement but he's been slacking off on giving the duty rosters Una draws up anything beyond the most cursory review recently. He needs to get back on top of that, but for now, he's going to plead exhaustion and ask. 

"This is, um, Ensign Xi, sir."

Chris at least knows who Xi is, which makes him feel a tiny bit better about his lack of focus lately. 

"All right, Xi, I'm going to need a secure transmission, Eyes Only, to Commodore Rojas at Starfleet Command, as soon as you can connect."

"Yes, sir." They sound a little wild-eyed at the thought of spinning up an Eyes Only connection, but Una knows Chris likes to get the junior officers in the thick of it as early as possible, so Chris is relying on her assessment that all will go well. And if it doesn't, well, it's only a call to Command and the next time, when it might be in the middle of an actual situation, Xi will know what not to do. 

"And Xi -- she is not going to be happy about us calling her at this time of night, but that's not on you. It's on me. You just put her through to me here in the ready room. Understood?"

"Yes, sir, initiating the protocol now."

Rojas is, as predicted, irritated at being hauled out of bed, but mostly, her irritation is deflected to the command team who'd sent such a poorly thought out diplomatic group in the first place.

"It's a mess," Chris says bluntly. "Walking right up to a disaster." Rojas sighs. "The queen is insulted--and rightly so, it's her technology they're denigrating--and close to three-quarters of the Council is insulted on behalf of their queen."

"And the rest?"

"Insulted because the bribes your team was offering weren't high enough."

Rojas mutters under her breath in Spanish; Chris can't quite hear, but the little he does catch is down-and-dirty filthy. It's really no wonder Una holds her in such high regard.

"You're back on the _Enterprise_ now, correct?"

"We're in orbit, but I don't want to stay much longer." Chris downs the rest of his bourbon. "Xahea has warp capabilities, but they don't have the kind of ships that can go up against a Constitution class and I don't want to be seen as a threatening presence."

Rojas sighs again. "You're sure you can get back on the surface?"

"As of now, I'd give it a strong 'probably.' Chris shrugs. "Things are a little complicated down there, but I do have a prior acquaintance with the queen, so… I can probably beam down again." He doesn't see any need to make things seem any more sure than they would be without the addition of Tilly to the mix. "I'm making no promises about opening negotiations, though."

"No, no," Rojas says. "Let's play this very carefully. If there's somewhere you can go… occupy yourself for the next few weeks, someplace within reasonable warp distance, that would be for the best. I'll begin the process to have the current team recalled and send the Federation's apologies as soon as possible and we'll call you back in when we're ready."

"I'm sure we can think of something appropriate," Chris says.

"Yes, your Commander Robbins will have an idea or two, I'm sure," Rojas says. "Thank you for your efforts, Captain. I'll be in touch." 

She ends the connection before Chris can even ask about what she knows about whatever Una has bubbling along on the back burners, but that's probably for the best.

❦ ❦ ❦ 

So, it turns out that former test pilots turned Constitution class starship captains kinda have an ongoing affection with adrenaline-producing activities, even in their spare time. Tilly isn't sure why this comes as a surprise to her, but boy-howdy, does it ever. Less of a shock is the news that she's kinda in thrall to the devastating smile and dimples combo on her very own test pilot/captain and thus regularly finds herself in very, very, very un-Tilly situations involving some combination of speed, ridiculous heights, extreme temperatures, and the need for razor-sharp reflexes/miniscule reaction times.

Sometimes, when things are extra-special wild, she can check the box for _All of the above_.

Fortunately, she usually only has to deal with the environments and doesn't have to provide the reflexes or the reaction times, because there had been several times when she would have been splatted all over the terrain she'd been talked into exploring.

What's _really_ shocking is that Chris keeps coming back and charming her out of Po's awesome science wing and off to see some other bit of Xahea that he's found while doing his due-diligence research on the planet and its cultures and customs. She can't have been all that great of a companion, but every time he's on-planet—and it's a _lot_ during those first few months when the extent of the diplomatic fuck-up was becoming clear—he has a list of things to check out and Tilly isn't really ever going to be able to tell him no. She'd like to think she'd have been a little less pathetically eager to be his adventuring buddy if she'd found a path that worked for her in this new situation, but, yeah, that hadn't happened yet, so she doesn't actually have to own up to that level of personal weakness.

(Almost as surprising is how easily he turned into someone she could be informal with, not only in person, but even in her head. It had been the 'Red' nickname that had done it, Tilly knows, because even after several careful talks about how she's not in his chain of command now, and how he doesn't stand on ceremony in his personal life, Tilly almost never could actually call him Chris to his face. He'd tried calling her Sylvia, but, yeah, _no_ , that's not ever going to be a thing, but then they'd been out on one of the crazy catamaran-like sailboats the Xaheans use and her hair had been _completely_ out of control, whipping around in the wind and half-blinding her, and he'd started in with it then. It probably would have died, except that she'd been unable to contain her disappointment at how _boring_ he was being. "'Red'," she'd snapped. "Seriously, Chris? Like I've never heard that one before. Some Best-of-Starfleet you are," and he, of course, hadn't shut up the entire rest of the trip. He actually doesn't call her it that often, but it's enough to remind her that this life isn't like before. She's almost to the point where she never even thinks of him as Pike or the captain, which had never occurred to her as something that might happen, even if she'd at some point made captain herself. But there she is, clipping a rock-climbing harness to a safety line and yelling back over her shoulder, "I'm telling you _right now_ , Christopher, if I fall, I am haunting you _forever_ ," and not even tripping herself up wondering if she should be using that affectionate teasing tone _or_ how much she likes it when he gives it right back to her with nothing more than a roll of his (still amazing) eyes.)

Because of course, what isn't shocking at all is that the perfectly normal crush she'd had on him right from the first time he'd walked onto the bridge of Discovery had blossomed straight through infatuation to something that's completely all-consuming, overwhelming and utterly hopeless. It's so much a part of her that she actually forgets about it most of the time. Like, it isn't something she broods about, because it just _is_ and there's no way to get rid of it or see any way that it ends well, so it isn't worth worrying about. Every now and then, though, he'll turn around from where he's doing something impossibly over-the-top--like breaking through the snowpack in the high mountains, going first so Tilly can follow in his wake and not even have to work half as hard to get to the cliff with spectacular views of the crystallized ice spires glittering and throwing rainbows and singing from the electromagnetic energy they're absorbing from Xahea's sun--and grin at her, showing her the pretty thing he's found for her, and she almost can't breathe for how much she wants him.

"It's fine," she tells Po. "Like Chris + Tilly--" She writes their initials in the air and then draws a heart around them-- " is a thing that's ever going to happen," she half-laughs. "I mean, I get to spend time with this awesome person, so who really cares whether my lady-boner-itch gets scratched. Modern technology exists to deal with exactly this situation."

Po's having her own relationship issues, where she's side-stepping the council that keeps throwing appropriate and approved mates at her, so she can do her royal duty and continue the line. Since the way Xahea-the-planet works is all tied up with the continuation of the royal family, Tilly guesses she sees the reasoning behind all the panic, but putting that on top of dealing with the council members who don't trust the Federation and don't like that Po is actually on speaking terms with Chris and the new team is a complete stress-bomb on Po. Tilly does her best to keep her swoony ridiculousness about Chris to a minimum and downplays all the times when she's aware of how totally gone on the guy she is.

❦ ❦ ❦ 

The signing of the preliminary agreement between Xahea and the Federation is, of course, a full diplomatic event. Chris, as the informal liaison between the two groups is, also as a matter of course, expected to be there, but since he'd been very _ad hoc_ , he at least doesn't have to actually do anything other than show up, clap politely, and make appropriate small talk with his tablemates over the excruciatingly long dinner. Po favors him with the first dance after the ceremonial exhibitions of traditional Xahean customs, which is a mark of honor that is certainly taken note of, on both sides of the treaty groups. It's considerably less formal between the two of them on the actual dance floor, as she tries to get him to break protocol and laugh and he threatens under his breath to tell the ill-advised previous ambassador that she missed his presence and would be happy to host him as a guest.

"Tilly's so right," she mutters under cover of a not-quite diplomatic smile. "That smile hides such evil."

Chris usually hears that when he's talked Tilly into climbing or rappelling or diving or otherwise taking risks she deems as _fucking insane, Christopher_ for all that she manages them with flying colors and an adrenaline high that sometimes surprises even Chris.

"Evil?" Chris murmurs back. "I had no idea I'd qualified for that level of affection."

"I'm pretty sure your spiffy translator is missing a few idioms," Po says sweetly, and Chris snorts, because Una has been planetside several times and figuring out nasty idioms is one of her favorite recreational activities. 

Chris catches sight of the lead on the diplomatic team--who, for all his success in cleaning up the previous team's mess, has never quite approved of Chris' friendship with Po--watching them with a predictable glower. He doesn't like that Chris is only a captain, but has the queen's ear. Idly, Chris wonders what the ambassador would make of the situation with Control, where Chris had Her Serene Highness in a stolen fighter under his command, but for tonight, neither he nor Po loses their (sometimes tenuous) holds on propriety and both go back to their formal duties with refreshed attitudes.

Fortunately, Chris only has a few other duty-dances, and then he can politely make his excuses, and since Po isn't quite as lucky (SUCKS TO BE QUEEN, he can hear her moaning), he detours to the kitchens and makes sure the replicator he's had installed as a celebration gift can generate enough pistachio spumoni to deliver to Her Serene Highness in one of the coffee mugs from the _Enterprise_ mess, one signed by as many of the crew who'd gotten a little liberty on Xahea that Number One's minions could find.

Duty and a small good deed accomplished for the day, Chris collects the last of the gifts he's brought with him, declares himself done with the things he has to do, and goes to find Tilly, which is pretty much how it always goes. He's been on Xahea at least monthly since the diplomatic emergency had become clear, and every time, he's managed to find a way to spend his down time with Tilly. Most of his official duties require him to sit for hours in the Xahean equivalent of windowless conference rooms, smoothing over the insults offered to the Xahean council--and to Po, who is far less concerned by that than her ruling council is--by the previous treaty team. It's important--he's well aware of how much of a game-changer Po's incubator is--but also tedious and aggravating every time he thinks how inexcusable the previous team's behavior had been. Once he's done with that, though, he inevitably finds himself hunting Tilly down and she always lets him to drag her out of whatever lab she's in. 

Part of that, Chris knows, is because she hasn't yet found her place on Xahea and she's using him as a distraction from all the uncertainty and indecision. He's fine with that--he wants to help however he can--especially since she's as much of a distraction for him. 

And because he can't remember the last time he's enjoyed himself more.

Xahea is theirs for the exploring, and Chris has always loved finding new cultures, new lifeforms--half of his drive to excel with Starfleet comes from that love. Tilly follows right along with him, even if she's not exactly as into the extreme conditions that fire Chris up. She's told him a couple of times to go on without her--and he had, once or twice, but it's never as much fun--but when he throttles back and makes sure she can hang with the plan, he's found a depth to his explorations that the high rush often misses. 

The last few trips he's made, Tilly's been the one with the plans and the executables. _Hey, I just ask Po and she sends me off to all these great people who do all the planning once I pick the ones you'll like the best, genius._ For all that he'd started everything, Chris isn't sure when things had gotten so easy between them, and he's finding himself unexpected satisfied that they have. And if he's also finding himself distracted in other ways, by her lovely smile and her beautiful eyes, well, he's really damn good at keeping things like that off the grid, tucked away where they won't upset the delicate balance he's achieved with his life.

Tonight, he doesn't have to look hard—despite the late hour, one loop through the science wing finds her up with the small visual telescopes, checking out the other planets of the system.

"Aren't you fancy," she says as he stands looking up at where she's standing on the platform that could be raised and lowered under the main tube. "Dress uniform, whoo!"

"I'm less excited about it," Chris answers dryly, fighting with the stiff, heavily embroidered collar that's been threatening to strangle him all night. "I brought you something, though."

"Somehow I feel like I'm violating a basic law or something." Tilly comes clattering down the steps, full of energy despite the late hour. Chris feels his own spirits rise just from her laugh. "You know, never take candy from mysterious men in dress uniforms."

"How about coffee, and I'll get rid of half of the uniform?" Chris brings the package out from behind his back, the pound of actual, Sol III coffee beans acquired through a series of ridiculous transactions in which _Enterprise_ 's quartermaster routinely engages to keep up his reputation as a master party planner. 

"Holy _crap_ ," Tilly gasps, launching herself off the last few steps and snatching the package out of Chris' hands, as though she expects it to dematerialize if she doesn't claim it. Chris laughs as she clutches it to her chest like a long-lost child. "How did you--" She shakes her head. "No, don't tell me. I don't think I can give it back even if you got it from dealers on the black market." She tears her eyes away from the package and looks wildly at Chris. "You _didn't_ do anything illegal, did you? Is Po going to have Section 31 showing up in her orbit?" 

"I--" Chris starts, but she was still on a roll.

"Wait, what am I saying?" Tilly laughs. "You're Captain Christopher Pike, you just have to show up and ask nicely. Who could resist?"

"Good lord," Chris groans. "Please don't tell me you actually believe that?"

"I might," Tilly says, cracking the vacuum seal on the package and inhaling deeply. Chris had seen addicts less excited about their drug of choice, but he's happy to make her happy, and whatever else is going on in his subconscious isn't even close to important enough to put any kind of pressure on that affectionate, teasing smile. "It would explain a _lot_ of things."

"I can definitely provide a fairly large number of witnesses to the contrary," Chris says, finally getting the heavy dress uniform tunic off and slinging it over the railing in lieu of a hanger. It's blessedly cool in the observatory, enough that he's grateful for the long-sleeved under-layer the uniform prescribes, but he still sighs with relief to at least be rid of the topmost layer.

"They're all jealous," Tilly says, still wearing the blissed-out expression. Since her eyes are closed, Chris lets himself smile a little more personally than he usually does. "But, okay, I'll brave the truth and ask where you got this, 'cause I know you haven't been near Earth since the last time you were here."

"My quartermaster is very… talented at unofficial, non-monetary transactions," Chris says. "And very, very bad at the senior staff poker game that Number One keeps running."

Tilly gasps. "Not only a black market operation, but gambling, too? I am shocked, Captain Best-of-Starfleet." She laughs quietly, a low gurgle of delight that feels like home to Chris for all that he's playing along with her. "Shocked and disappointed."

"Enough to give back the ill-gotten gains?"

"What?" Tilly's eyes fly open. "No way, nuh-uh, no how." She clutches the package fiercely. "Nope, no take-backsies, mine, all mine."

Chris laughs. "I see where your weak point is."

"I admit to my personal failings and will think of some way to atone for them, so long as it's not giving up actual coffee."

"So young," Chris mock-sighs. "Yet so corrupted."

"All your fault," Tilly says with an airy unconcern. She settles herself on the step next to him, which at least means she doesn't notice whatever Chris can't keep off his face as his brain chooses that time to present him with a very explicit vision of exactly how else he could corrupt her. 

"So," Tilly is saying, thankfully not noticing anything wrong with Chris, "How was the party?"

"Kinda the usual," Chris manages to say in a normal voice. "Speeches from people who have no idea what went into making the alliance. Lots of self-congratulations. Little bit of dancing."

"And did you congratulate yourself?" Tilly asks softly. "Because you're the reason it happened."

"I didn't do all that much," Chris says. Tilly snorts. "No, I just--listened, mostly."

" _And_ made the Federation listen," Tilly says. "Don't think Po doesn't know exactly how loud you must have been yelling at them."

"It was more fast talking than yelling," Chris says. 

"Oh, so I should add con man to the gambling and the black marketeering?"

"Now you're getting close to the true job description," Chris says, a little more seriously than he'd intended. "And it's only a preliminary agreement to talk about an actual treaty, so I'm not sure we can even say I'm a successful con man."

"Are you still assigned to this, the agreement to talk about a treaty?" Tilly asks, also serious.

"Probably," Chris says. "I doubt I'm getting out of this just because Po and her council agreed to start the actual talks."

Tilly is quiet long enough that Chris turns to see what's wrong.

"I'm sorry," she finally says. "I know you'd much rather be out finding new parts of the galaxy, but I'm also really, really glad you'll still be coming around."

"I'm getting at least a little bit of the exploring fix from spending time here," Chris tells her. "It's a different focus--deep, rather than wide, but it's still another planet, which is mostly all I ever wanted."

"It'll help, your still being here," Tilly says. "I mean, Po's always trusted you, but I think the reasonable part of the council is all Team!Pike, too, now."

"That's good to hear," Chris says. "Knowing I'm helping."

"You are," Tilly says quietly. She's suddenly lost all of her bubbly mood. "And I'm glad for selfish reasons, too." She smiles but it's tentative and not all that happy. "I'm--you know, the alternatives to being here all pretty much suck--" 

It had taken a while for Chris to get the full story of the suit crash-landing Tilly here on Xahea--or at least what little she remembered and what little more the planet's monitoring systems could offer, but seeing the twisted remains of the suit itself had been a gut-punch.

"I mean, I'm happy to be here, but…" She shrugs a little, like she's embarrassed. "It's so much better when I know you'll be here in a month or next week or just _sometime_."

Her hair has fallen down to mask her face; Chris reaches out and brushes a little of it back behind her ear. It's silky and soft and the curls wind around his fingers, clinging to him gently. "I'm even more glad to know I'm helping there," Chris tells her. "I wish I could do more."

"No, it's--I'm fine, really," Tilly says. "Sometimes, I'm just-- homesick, I guess. And you're--you feel--"

Chris' brain supplies the end of that, that he feels like home, right as Tilly looks up and meets his eyes. She's always been transparent about her feelings, or at least Chris has thought that, but the things he's seeing in her eyes tonight are things he knows he hasn't seen before, not in the least because he thinks he might have been looking for them for longer than he's acknowledged even to himself.

Chris doesn't know who leans in first--which is entirely to his detriment, because he _should_ be on top of this situation, no matter how surprised he is to be there--but they're a centimeter away from kissing when he manages to get himself under control and stop, at least long enough for his brain to kick in that he can't simply do this, that Tilly's young and incredibly vulnerable at this point and that he cares about her far too much to screw this up, however sure he is about what he's feeling. 

"Tilly, wait," he says, as gently as possible. She still jumps back as if he'd yelled, scrambling to her feet and stumbling down the rest of the stairs.

"Ohmygod, I'm sorry," she's saying, "I'm so so sorry." She half-trips and Chris jumps to catch her before she goes down. "Oh, god, I'm such a, such a clutz and, and, clearly, an _idiot_ \--I didn't mean to put you in that kind of a situation--" 

Her face has flushed a deep red and she won't meet his eyes, not even once she's taken a deep breath and gotten herself somewhat under control, though even as she pulls away from where he's still holding her arm he can feel how she's shaking.

"Look," she says, her voice remarkably calm for all that she'd been nearly crying a few seconds before; Chris knows a flash of pride at how much she's obviously learned since he'd first met her, "this is--you don't need to let me down nicely. Let's just pretend this never happened, and you--I won't bother you when you come back for the actual treaty meetings. You don't have to worry about that, or think that I'll make it awkward--"

"I don't worry about that at all," Chris interrupts. "I only stopped us because--"

"No, really, I was serious about not needing to be let down nicely," Tilly says, dogged and determined. "It's fine; we're good, and I'll be--"

" _Tilly_ ," Chris says, before she can spiral off on a path he can see is not at all where he was intending them to go. "I stopped us because I thought there were some things we needed to talk about."

She laughs, but it's so far from her usual happy gurgle Chris has to school his face to keep from wincing. "No, trust me -- There really isn't all that much, okay?"

"I kinda have to disagr--"

"Holy _crap_ ," Tilly snaps, and at least she's looking at Chris now, meeting his eyes squarely, anger and hurt flaring in equal measures across her face, and whatever he’s done, Chris needs to fix it, _pronto_. "Will you just _let it go_? Just let this entire mortifying encounter _end_? Let me take the damn coffee you brought and go hide in my rooms and let it all be over? I swear on Einstein's grave that tomorrow morning we can meet for breakfast like we always do and I will be _fine_."

__

__

"One question," Chris says, determined not to let this slip through his fingers, no matter how embarrassing it might prove. He's fairly certain they can sort it out between the two of them, no matter what the answer, but he needs to ask.

"You know, I've thought this before, in both good and bad situations, but hey, at least I'm not in your chain of command so I get to say it now: you are so fucking _stubborn_." 

"I am," Chris says, as much of an apology as an agreement. "One question."

Tilly takes a deep breath and then shakes her head. "Fine. One question."

Chris takes a deep breath of his own, but then he thinks of how much he wants to be with her whenever he can, how many times he's firmly set aside the desire for more, all the emotions he'd read in her eyes tonight, and it's easy to say, "Would you be interested in a relationship beyond friendship with me?"

❦ ❦ ❦ 

"Would I be interested in a relationship beyond friendship with you?" Tilly hears the shrill note in her voice, but there's no way she's going to calm down now. She's never known him to be this obtuse; it's bordering on cruel and she's only barely holding onto her composure as it is. "What kind of a dumbass question is that, Christopher?"

Chris starts to say something, but Tilly is--is--she's fucking _furious_ at being played with and really doesn't need anything more to wind her up. Whatever the reason he's asked the question--and Tilly can't see anything than it being to get her fucking embarrassing crush out in the open so he can deal with it--he doesn't need to explain anything further. She's sure he'll be polite about it, but she still isn't in the mood for laying herself quite so bare. He won't stop pushing, though, so yes, she's not stopping now.

"Of course I'd be interested, just like I wanted my 7th birthday party to be on Mars or how I wanted a particle accelerator when I started high school—"

"Did you actually want a particle accelerator—?" Chris starts to say. He's smiling like he's delighted, which is ridiculously distracting, but Tilly keeps herself focused, because this whole conversation is entirely too stressful and she needs to get it finished before she completely embarrasses herself _and_ loses her second-best friend.

"Of course I wanted a particle accelerator. Nerd, remember?" she snaps. "The point, Chris, is that none of those things is _actually possible_." He starts to argue, _again_ , holy crap, but she plows on. "No, seriously, answer me this: in what world does Starfleet's most decorated captain—who also made that rank younger than anyone else, _ever_ , _and_ who looks the way you do—shut up, you know exactly how you look--in what world does he end up with an awkward, babbling—"

"Beautiful, talented, loving and generous genius, who not so incidentally earned the Federation's highest honor for her part in ending the war I got ordered to sit out," Chris interrupts in that captain's voice that still does _things_ to her insides. 

His smile is kind and open even though Tilly is staring at him like, like, a lovestruck, brainless _ninny_. 

Which she is. 

"I'm hoping it's the same world where she ignores the incredibly attractive, age-appropriate Xaheans that are swarming around her and doesn't mind the two extra decades I'm carrying around, not to mention the profession that keeps me light-years away from her most of the time."

Tilly closes her eyes and counts to five, just in case she's hallucinating and will see something different when she opens them, but, no, yeah, Chris is still there, still calm, still looking at her like--

 _No_ , she lectures herself, channeling her mother at her most draconian. _You are not seeing what you think you're seeing, Sylvia Ann Tilly. *Get it together*._

"There aren't any Xaheans swarming around me," Tilly finally manages to say. She has no idea why her brain latched on to that part of the impossible things he's said, but there it is.

"Trust me," Chris says, and seriously, Tilly needs her brain to be actually _working_ right now, not swooning over that edge of possessiveness it keeps insisting that it's hearing. "Swarming. Everywhere we go."

"That's because we're the only humans they've ever seen and it's a whole novelty thing. Or, they know it's me--the hair gives it away every time--and I'm friends with Po and --"

"Breathe," Chris says with, Tilly has to admit, impressive patience, because boy-wow is she in total babble mode.

"I just mean, they don't actually want me for any real reason, so it doesn't matter if there's-- swarming."

"Good to know," Chris says, and now Tilly's damn brain is pointing out how there are tension lines around his eyes smoothing out, which again is totally delusional on her part.

"I--" Tilly can't look at him when she says this next part. It's cowardly, she knows, but she can't watch that nice, caring look turn flat, which is really the only rational outcome of this conversation, because she has clearly, _clearly_ misunderstood something and asking for clarification is going to kill the pretty fantasy her brain has been spinning. "Okay," she whispers. "Say I said, 'yes, Chris, I would like a relationship beyond friendship with you.' Then what?"

"Then I'd probably ask if you wanted to actually go through with that kiss that almost happened." His voice is incredibly gentle and kind and … hopeful? All it does is make Tilly want to throw herself at him. Literally. 

"And if I said 'yes,' to that, too?"

"Then I'd kiss you," Chris says, calm and matter-of-fact, like he's telling Helm to jump to warp speed or asking for clarification on a report. It's solid and rational, no matter how Tilly still can't square it with the crazy-place words he's saying in it. 

It's more or less the moment of truth, though. He's either lying to her or he's not; and frankly, Tilly isn't sure which one of those options is more unlikely. She can't let it go--she _can't_ \--she'll hate herself for forever if she does, so Tilly closes her eyes and makes herself say, "Yes, Chris, I would like a relationship beyond friendship with you."

When she finally gets her eyes open, Chris is still standing right there with her, watching her with something she is entirely too cowardly to name in his eyes. He smiles at her once he sees her looking at him, and then reaches out to take her hand.

"I'm glad," he says, bringing her hand up so he can brush a kiss across her knuckles. 

Tilly's lungs forget how to work, not that she's gonna get all judge-y about it. It's an entirely appropriate response, she feels. 

Chris just keeps looking at her. "Would it be okay if I kissed you for real?"

"Yes," Tilly whispers.

She keeps her eyes open the whole time he's coming closer and even when he reaches out with the hand that's not still holding hers and brushes the backs of his fingers across her cheekbone. His eyes are steel blue, which she's known for forever, but never from such a close vantage point, and they're kind and serious and focused so very clearly on _her_. She finally loses the battle with her own eyes, letting them flutter closed right before his mouth touches hers, a slow, careful press of his lips that lights up half the nerves in her body. When he backs off a little, but then comes right back to catch her upper lip between both of his, everything else metaphorically jumps up and yells _me, me, me next_ and Tilly's basically gone.

That's all he does, though, stepping back enough to put (too much, in Tilly's opinion) space between them and letting his hand drop from where he'd been touching her face. When he goes to let go of her hand, though, Tilly gets her own hand twisted around enough to grab onto his and keep him close.

He's watching her carefully, like he's not sure what to expect--which is, Tilly will admit, not an entirely unreasonable assumption given how crazy she'd been not two minutes earlier. She isn't gonna beat herself down, though, because holy-freaking-crap, is _this_ a plot twist she hadn't seen coming. 

Even so, color her totally not surprised that Chris Pike totally fucking knows how to level up a relationship even if he had taken only the most baby of steps. Given everything she knows about him, she's pretty damned sure that means the ball is one hundred percent in her court and while she doesn't think she can make a wrong move here, it might not be an awful idea to stop and consider her options.

More kissing is kind of a given, natch. Or really, more like an imperative. She could blurt that out--honesty is always best, she thinks--but it possibly might be better to think of something sliiiightly more sophisticated than her brain's current _you, me, *more* please, *now*_. He's still watching her, still careful, still concerned, but then his eyes drop quickly to her mouth, just for a second, so fast she would have missed it if she hadn't been watching _him_ so carefully, and she realizes her tongue has crept out to sweep across her top lip, like she's chasing the taste of his mouth while she's considering what to say, and his eyes, when they come back up to meet hers are that much darker, his pupils that much wider, and that's really really _it_.

"So," Tilly says, with a determined nod, because she is _not_ missing her shot here, "I am very much aware that I have been more than a little bonkers tonight, and you are well within your rights to want to make sure I'm not going to flip out even more over all of this--which was--without a doubt--very nice, I mean, just, like, so nice for a first kiss, but maybe a little … short?" She stops for a second and considers her wording. "Yeah, short; so--and please know that I am saying this with all due love and respect, Christopher--but is that really all you've got?"

She's still watching him as closely as she can so she sees the surprise--almost shock, she loves that she can catch him out like that--flash across his face and how quickly it's replaced with a slow-dawning, delighted grin that she answers with a smile of her own and a cocked eyebrow.

"Let's find out," Chris says, moving fast and taking her mouth in what Tilly's brain informs her is A Kiss, one that doesn't let up until she's half-seeing stars from needing to breathe and then only giving her enough time gasp in enough air to keep from passing out before he's coming in for more, his tongue sliding past hers and his hands holding the back of her head steady. Her own hands have gotten themselves buried in the hair at the base of his neck, which is an excellent place to be starting out.

"Better," Tilly manages to say when Chris finally lets her go. 

"Thank you," Chris says, with what would be a perfect deadpan except for the tiiiniest of eye crinkles, which, Tilly realizes with a jolt of joy, she is now _allowed to touch_. And she doesn't miss how his breath hitches in when she does, even if his voice is steady and low when he asks, "More?"

"Yes, _please_ ," Tilly half-sings. This is also A Kiss, but slower this time, and very, very exploratory. Tilly is all for exploring--she is a scientist, after all. There's another one after that, and then, three or four--or who knows, maybe twenty or thirty--after _that_ , all of them long and involved (except for the ones that are short and maybe a little bite-y, about which there will absolutely no complaining on Tilly's part, no sir, nuh uh) so that Tilly's head is happily floating and the rest of her is wrapped up as close as she can get to Chris when they finally come up for air.

"Okay?" Chris asks, and Tilly laughs. 

"Ohmygod, how can you even ask that?" 

"Just checking in," Chris answers.

"Check, check, check," Tilly laughs, which--so much for being anything but who she is. Chris is smiling down at her, though, so that's a good thing. "Also," she says in an exaggerated whisper, "I did not expect anything like this to happen, like, _ever_ , so I miiiight be a little giddy."

"I'm a little surprised by it myself," Chris says. "It's been--a while."

There's definitely something going on behind his eyes--Tilly might be half-out-of-her-mind with glee, but she can still see that happening. She makes a mental note to pay attention (because, holy crap, that's like an okay, non-stalkery thing she can do now---aaaaand she's back to giddy, whoops.)

"So, maybe we should move this astonishing occurence somewhere that's not a public observatory?" Tilly is, hand-to-God, totally okay with not moving, but it seems like a thing that wouldn't be a bad idea, if only because Chris is actually kind of a big deal at this point, what with all the saving of the treaty he's been doing, and it would probably be A Thing if somebody walked in and they were, um, involved with each other, which Tilly would really really really like to be happening sometime in the very near future.

"Getting somewhere a little more private probably isn't a bad idea," Chris says, so Tilly unwinds her arms from around his neck and waits while he retrieves the tunic to his dress uniform before setting off for her rooms over in the modern wing of the compound. (She tries super-hard not to think of it as a palace, which it technically is, because it's just too weird that she lives there. It feels like cheating somehow--she'd never been the little girl with a princess phase. She'd always had her head in the stars, and now here she is, literally in the stars, in a palace, with a queen for a best friend. And that's still not as mind-boggling as the total hotass she's been making out with for the last hour.)

At least Chris has been back to her apartment before, so it's not completely new to have him in her personal space. It's nerve-wracking enough that he's there for very personal reasons now. She'd be a complete basket-case if he hadn't ever seen her collections of stuff before.

"I know I said only one question," Chris says as soon as the door shuts behind them, ''but it's also probably not a bad idea if we talked a little about this." He leans down and kisses her, light and quick, which is almost as nice as the gorgeous smile he gifts her with. "Us."

Tilly can't help the little thrill she gets from that 'us', but then she settles down and puts forth her best arguments. 

"Okay," she says, "I am totally unsurprised that you, of all people, want to talk through relationship things first, and ordinarily I would be all over that shit, but unless I'm mistaken, you only have, like, another 12 Xahean hours before you go beaming back to _Enterprise_ , so can we do the talking part of the very adult relationship we are embarking on over comms?" 

"I--suppose," Chris says, with an edge of doubt that Tilly is pretty sure means the whole Captain's Concerns thing is happening again, even if it _had_ been him who'd taken the first step.

"Because," Tilly keeps going, because she has Things To Point Out, "talking _can_ happen over comms, while _this_ \--" She pulls him closer, close enough that she can wrap her arms around his neck— "can't. Or, well, it can--and it probably will--I'm all for vid-sex, let me just put that out there now--but it won't happen when we're touching, and I would really—" she goes up on her toes to press a kiss to the base of his throat—"really—" another kiss— "really like to touch you and taste you."

Chris is very, very still against her--not pushing her away, but more like he's holding himself in control, so she tips her head back and looks up at him to say, "Can we do that now? Please?"

"We can," he finally says, bringing his hands up to cup her face and kissing her very, very gently. Tilly thinks about swooning, but that seems to be a poor use of her limited time so she promises herself she'll revisit the topic at a later date. "I just want to know you're sure--"

"Chris," Tilly says, going up on her toes to kiss him again, as much to swallow down her smile as to get another quick kiss in, "I know the age thing is, y'know, a thing, and I really deeply appreciate your awareness of it, but I was not living a life of solitude on _Discovery_. You probably didn't know this, because, well, I'm guessing you weren't in on all the gossip loops, but I am all about the fighter jocks, even if they haven't quite gotten to your rank."

Chris kisses her again, and honesty compels Tilly to add, "I mean, I had my soldier phase and the musician side path--but I'm guessing everyone has that one--but yeah, the flyboys--and girls--were my jam."

Chris blinks, like he's trying to parse her multiple clauses, which, Tilly can admit, do tend to run wild at times, but then smiles that fucking crooked half-smile that should be _illegal_ and says, "I'm pretty sure I don't want to know."

" _I'm_ pretty sure we have better things to do right now," Tilly says, breathless just from how his hands are sliding up her back.

"Roger that," Chris answers; and _Oh, yeah_ , Tilly thinks as he's somehow already gotten her shirt off and her pants undone and his hands ev-er-y-where, _so much better things to do_. 

She starts to say something about how there's a bed in the other room, but he has her down on the couch before the words basically even form in her brain, and if she'd thought his hands were good, his mouth is going to make her insane as he skims it over her skin, lips and tongue and teeth _everywhere_ , along her throat and across her shoulders and then teasing along the edge of her bra before he gets that out of the way and starts paying very serious attention to her breasts. Most of the people she's been with have liked her curves, but Chris is taking it to the next level, quick flicks of his tongue teasing at her nipples, soft bites that leave her gasping, slow, sucking kisses that make her groan and arch into him for more. 

"Tell me what you like," he says, as if she can think when he's rolling her nipples to hard, aching points that he can scrape his teeth over again and again. She manages to babble out a few nonsense syllables there, at least, but then he's got his hand between her legs and two fingers buried in her. And of course, he's watching her while he fucks her so he sees when he hits the exact right spot inside her and it's all she can do not to wail. "That's it," he tells her, that damn voice almost crooning at her as he fingers her again and again, perfect and relentless. "Right there, Red, show me what you look like when you come, c'mon."

"I can't," Tilly gasps, nearly desperate. "I've never been--"

"No rush," Chris says, not changing a thing. "We can go all night, just like this," and Tilly does wail at that, because she's never been able to come like this, but then nobody's ever promised to fuck her all night until she does. She's already shaking and strung out and it hasn't been all that long at all. It'd be embarrassing if she wasn't so high from the endorphin rush that she can barely remember her own name.

"Please," she begs. "Touch me, touch my--"

"Mmm," Chris says, dropping his head down to kiss her, his tongue fucking into her mouth with the same lazy rhythm his hand's keeping. "That's for the next one," he promises. "And maybe the one after that, if you're good. I'll work your clit hard then, but you have to come for me here, Red."

He's picked up the pace and he's stopped being so careful with her, and she can feel it building in her thighs and low in her belly, everything spiralling in, curling into to her cunt, to where he's curving his fingers and catching her perfectly.

"Oh, fuck," she hears herself sobbing. "Chris, fuck, _there_ , pleaseplease." 

"That's it," Chris tells her. "That's it, you're so beautiful like this, letting me see you like this," and she's soaking up every word that she never in her wildest dreams expected to hear. She's close, so close, her nipples drawing up tight and hard as he fucks her harder and harder, and then, when she can barely breathe for how desperate she is to come, he drops his head down to drag his tongue over her nipples, teasing them harder before he bites at them, quick and sharp and ruthless. She jerks and keens, the sudden shock of pleasure too intense to process, and he does it again, and then again, biting down hard enough that he can tug at them fiercely and her orgasm crashes down over her, wave after wave that threatens to swamp her, make it impossible to even breathe. 

Chris keeps his promise, too-- before Tilly's brain has even started to even out, his thumb is on her clit, flicking over it lightly enough that's she's not even sure it's happened before he comes back to rub hard, again and again, and she's spiralling out fast and wild, sobbing and shaking and nearly undone.

"Tilly," Chris is murmuring, his voice uneven and breathless, and oh, but she _likes_ hearing him like that. Tilly makes her arms work and reaches out to bring him close, close enough that she can kiss him, uncoordinated and still shaking, but determined nonetheless. "Tilly, god," he sighs into her mouth and she somehow gets him so that he's on top of her and she can wrap her legs around him.

"C'mon," she manages to say, "Chris, come fuck me for real, let me feel you inside me," and he groans and is finally, finally pressing inside her, one long glorious stroke that she arches up into and draws him in deep. "Don't stop," she tells him, dragging her hands down his back, raking at his skin with her nails. "Don't _stop_ ," and he doesn't, moving in her steady and endless. 

Tilly can feel one more orgasm building, but he's way out ahead of her now, his face flushed and his eyes almost black from how dilated his pupils are. He's still focused on her, though, and he understands immediately when she lets go of him with one arm so she can work her hand between them and get that extra bit of pressure in the right spot.

"There?" Chris grits out, driving into her, and then dropping his head down to steal a fast, dirty kiss from her after she whimpers an agreement. Every time he pushes into her after that, he's grinding her fingers down on her clit and it takes no time at all for her to ramp back up to frantic and out of control. "Come on, Red," Chris says, still in that rough, almost desperate growl. "One more time; I want to feel you come on my cock."

Tilly'd already been at the point where she almost couldn't breathe for how good everything feels--Chris deep inside her, the muscles in his back flexing under her hand, the strength of the legs she has her own wrapped around--but that, the voice, the words, knowing Chris, who's always in control, is equally as far gone as she is, sends her off the edge to where she's clawing at his back and grinding up into him, feeling herself tightening around where he's buried in her, hearing his voice break on a ragged growl, equal parts unbelieving and triumphant that she's dragging him with her as everything he's making her feel sweeps down uncontrollably and washes over her.

❦ ❦ ❦ 

Chris isn't actually asleep--which is not a surprise these days even with the fading rush from the sex earlier; he barely sleeps on the best of nights and there's too much running through his brain at the unexpected ending to the evening--but he comes fully awake as soon as Tilly slips out of bed. He starts to say something but she's into the 'fresher more quickly than he expects and he hears the shower come on almost immediately. It's a little odd, but… Chris decides to let it be. For all that he knows Tilly, he doesn't know her as a lover and he doesn't want to look like he's a control freak, but when it's thirty minutes later and the water is still running, he goes and taps on the door.

"Everything okay?" he calls, keeping his voice as low and calm as he can.

"It's--I'm--" Tilly answers, and aside from how she's not actually answering, Chris also thinks she sounds like she's crying.

"Tilly? Can I come in?"

There's a long silence--though Chris is even more sure he hears crying--and then Tilly says, in a very small voice, "It's open," and Chris lets himself in.

Tilly is sitting on the floor of the shower, tucked into the corner with her head down on her knees and very definitely crying. Chris finds himself across the room and on his knees outside the shower without actually remembering how he got there. 

"Are you okay?" Chris asks, which is quite possibly the stupidest thing that's come out of his mouth in decades. Of _course_ she isn't okay, she's hiding in the shower, crying. He wants to reach out and hold her, but the hideous thought that's been lurking in his brain since she'd crept out of bed explodes across his consciousness. "Tilly, god, did I--?"

"No, _no_ , you didn't do anything," Tilly chokes out between sobs. "You were fabulous and it was amazing being with you, really," she gasps. 

"Sweetheart--" Chris is honestly at a loss.

"It's just, I was almost asleep and I thought, oh, my god, wait until I tell Jo and Key and Michael that I banged the captain--" She looks up, smiling even as her face is blotchy from the tears. "That's who you are, you know. Still. I mean, Saru insists he's still a Commander, and Lorca is... y'know, the asshole, but they'd know exactly who I meant if I said it that way, I banged the captain, like, who else would I be talking about? But then I remembered--" her face crumples again--"I remembered that I can't tell them, that I don't even know if they're alive and they don't know what happened to me and--"

She breaks down again and Chris literally can't stand not to reach into the shower and put his arms around her. She lets him gather her up and settle her on his lap, and he holds her while she cries and cries and cries. She clings to him, so he doesn't think she holds him responsible, but it's something that he needs to remember, that this exile she's in can be at least partially laid at his door. He doesn't know that he'd have made a different decision if he'd known this was going to happen, but that doesn't help much in the face of her misery. 

So he holds her close and when her sobs quiet to the occasional hiccup, gets her back to bed and finds a cloth that he can wring out with cold water and lay over eyes. She holds onto his hand, tugging on it until he lets her pull him back down with her.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, her voice shredded from the crying. 

"Don't be," he tells her. "You've dealt with everything with astonishing grace. A few tears can't take away from that."

"Oh, god, you're going to make me cry again," she sniffles. "Don't be so nice."

"I'll remember to yell a little more next time," Chris says, achieving a credibly dry tone even through the heaviness sitting on his chest. He really needs to be more in control, no matter how lovely he finds her or how amazed he is that she can somehow find her way through to the light in any given situation.

"'Kay," Tilly murmurs. "Stay with me?"

"Whatever you want, Red."

"I am going to figure out a way to tell them," Tilly mumbles.

"'I banged the captain,' really?"

"With a capital C," she slurs. "'N prob'ly a capital B, too." She squints up at him. "Yeah?"

"If I say that yes, it was a capital B-bang, it doesn't mean I endorse the message." Chris is certain that literally no one else in this--or any other--galaxy could have gotten him to carry on this conversation, but here he is--and given how more-or-less undone he'd been by the sex they're talking about, he's not even stretching the truth to play along with her. "I'm just grateful I never have to see Saru's face finding said message. Or Stamets'."

"Are you embarrassed?" A breathy little giggle dances across his skin, which is actually worth any mortification. "Oh, god, you are." She sounds delighted, which is also worth a little of Chris’ ego taking a hit even as she tips her head back and kisses all along the underside of his jaw. He's not exactly sure how she'd figured out how much he likes that as quickly as she had, but she's very focused when she wants to be. 

Now is not the time to go down that path, though--she's almost shaking from exhaustion and the aftermath of the emotional storm this night has turned out to be.

"Say goodnight, Tilly," Chris murmurs, before things can get even more out of hand.

"G'night, Tilly," she giggles, and she's still laughing as she finally slides into sleep.

Chris isn't going to get much of that tonight, not after...everything, but there are pluses to being awake and able to hold her as she sleeps, not the least of which is being able to indulge his protective streak without raising any flags that things are moving too quickly between them. He still has his doubts, and he probably should have kept things at a slower pace, but he hadn't and that's what he has to work with. 

All he can realistically do, he thinks, is to make her present as good as he can, especially since he isn't going to be able to give her much of a future.

❦ ❦ ❦ 

It is just her fucking life, Tilly thinks as she wakes up the next morning with eyes that feel like they've been sandpapered and the echoes from a crying-jag headache dancing between her temples, Chris still holding her. She's somehow ended up with Prince Charming in the castle and (she can hear her mother's voice so perfectly clearly in her head) she's still a mess. She doesn't even want to think about what her face must look like, not after all the ugly, ugly crying that had happened during the night.

"Good morning," Chris says in this sleep-rough, intimate voice that does incredibly unfair things to Tilly's brain. 

"Hi," she answers, except her voice is stupidly small and pathetic. She takes a deep breath and tries again, rolling over so she can see his face. "Good morning." 

She sounds better on the second try, and he's smiling at her with his eyes, which emboldens her to lean in and press a kiss to his mouth. "Thank you."

"For what?" he asks, all rumbly and low. 

"Lots of things," Tilly answers, kissing him again, kind of delighted by how he needs a shave and how his hair is about as crazy as hers, all things that Captain Pike never shows to the world. To be honest, she doesn't think Chris shows that much mess to the world either, but here she is, getting to comb her fingers through his hair and kiss her way across his scratchy jaw. "The sex, of course."

She nips at his ear lobe and smiles at the almost sub-vocal growl it gets. She's tempted to do it again, but the next part of what she has to say is the important part, so she stills herself and whispers, "But mostly, thanks for not only not running off when I lost it, but for wading in and making me feel better."

She's kept her head down, so she's staring at his throat and collarbone while she's talking, but he tangles his hand in her hair and tips her head back. 

"Tilly," he says, kissing her mouth carefully, "if you have to thank me for that, I need to go kick some asses in my officers' corps and insist that Command start drilling in common decency a lot earlier in the Academy curriculum."

"I mean," Tilly says, a little breathless from how thoroughly he's kissing her, her mouth and her throat, and along the top of her shoulder, "I agree, but that doesn't mean I didn't--appreciate it." She almost slips up and says _didn't feel loved_ , but manages to keep her mouth from completely screwing her over. "Also, the sex was really, really nice--"

" _Nice_?" Chris asks, and Tilly shivers at the sudden challenge in his voice. "That's what you think, Red?"

"I-- _oh_ \--" Tilly cries out as he drops his head and flicks his tongue over her nipples, playing with them until they're hard and aching. "Nice is not a bad thi--" She breaks off when he switches to biting at them. " _Chris_ ," she whimpers.

"I have two hours before I need to be back on the bridge," Chris tells her as he kneels up on the mattress and strips the covers off the bed, leaving Tilly naked and exposed, which probably should be freaking her out, except he's looking at her with eyes that are crazy hot-and-bothered and make it somehow possible for her to not care at all and just reach up for him. "I'm pretty sure I can do better than _nice_."

He lets his eyes move over her slowly, which is awesome and all, but laying back and accepting the delay kinda feels like she's letting down the team. And _she_ can do better than that, too.

"I'm sorry, do I look like I'm stopping you?" Tilly challenges, letting her hands smooth down over her sides and back up to play with her nipples herself. It's quite possibly the best comeback she's ever delivered in her life; it's not at all surprising that she's with Christopher-Goddamn-Pike when she does it. He actually does inspire excellence. "Go for it."

"With pleasure, Red," he breathes, getting her legs over his shoulders and his mouth scraping up a path on her inner thighs that has her squirming even before he licks up into her. "With pleasure."

*

Tilly is totally taking it as a personal win that Chris beams back up to the _Enterprise_ unshaven and unshowered, thank you _very_ much.

And, yeah, sure, she needs a fucking nap, and her thigh muscles are seriously about to give out, but that's hardly something to complain about. 

Win, win, _win_.


	3. 2258

"Number One," Chris says as the rest of the command team is filing out of the _Enterprise_ 's ready room. He's still soliciting mission proposals for short range systems; they can open up the distance a little now since the critical time seems to have passed with the negotiations. Chris doesn't think he's going to need to be on call as much, and he wants to work out a system where they can stack missions, with Una taking command as they drop Chris off on Xahea and then loop back around to pick him up. "A word, please?" 

"Of course, Captain."

He's caught a bit of a nap, but is otherwise running on years' of experience in staying on his feet with not nearly enough sleep. Well, that and a little adrenaline at finding himself thrown into an unexpected--if otherwise wholly satisfactory--situation. Since that's starting to fade, he's assuming his subconscious has decided telling Una what's going on will top it off nicely.

"At some point," he tells her after everyone else has cleared out and it's just the two of them in the ready room, "I'm going to have to cut you loose and let you get a ship of your own."

"At some point," she agrees. "It's not quite time yet."

"You let me know," Chris says. As far as he's concerned, she's a better captain than a good half of the ones who actually have ships, but she still has things on her own personal checklist that she’s working on. He'll take his cues from her, for now, but as soon as she’s ready, he'll start working the promotions board.

"Oh, I will," she answers, smiling. "But that's not the only reason you wanted me to hang back and talk."

Chris shakes his head, because of course she knows that. "No," he agrees, but then isn't quite sure how to proceed. Finally, he just says, "Tilly and I--"

"Ah," Una says. 

"Is that a good 'ah' or a bad one?"

"I'm not sure," Una says slowly. "You look--" She studies him, head tilted to one side. "You look as though it's a good thing. I'm happy about that."

"There's a 'but' in there," Chris says.

"It's not a straightforward situation," she says simply.

"That it isn't." Chris goes to find the bourbon, which he should have done right from the start because this was never going to be a short and easy conversation. 

"You've come back from Xahea in better frame of mind than I've seen you in years." Una accepts a glass with wordless thanks. "That's worth a lot."

"But it is complicated," Chris says. "And there are entirely too many opportunities for me to fuck this up but good."

"Of course," Una says. "Which one bothers you the most?"

"Screwing over the beautiful, talented, incredibly vulnerable young woman who's all but alone because I'm--not at the top of my game."

"Got it in one," she says. "Which is good, because I'm too tired to have the discussion about how screwing up the dilithium negotiation excuse is just that, an excuse."

"That's still a concern, too," Chris points out. "And one that affects the entire galaxy."

"So don't fuck over the queen's friend and make it all awkward to have you planetside."

"Easy for you to say." Chris looks at the bourbon in his glass, turning it slowly so the light catches it differently. "You and I both know I'm not exactly sure of my judgement these days."

"Talos was a new definition of FUBAR," Una says bluntly, and so evenly that Chris knows she's covering up a world of fury. Still. "Beginning to end. No judgement needed."

"You seemed to have gotten past it," Chris points out.

"Well, I don't have to rebuild that sense of optimism that keeps you going." She shrugs. "The Talosians played with all of our brains. I had less of a sense of disappointment to work my way through so I'm a little ahead of you in my processing."

"You make me sound like a naive cadet."

"No," she says, unexpectedly gentle. "We should be able to expect basic decency; I just can't quite convince my black heart that it will always happen." She took a healthy drink from her glass. "Most of the time, I think that's for the best, but not always."

"The Talosians helped Spock," Chris says. 

"Bully for them."

"They sent various projections to the ship," Chris says, hesitating for a moment before adding, "To me."

He knows she understands just by the infinitesimal narrowing of her eyes.

"And how is our little shuttle crash survivor?" Una's voice is as sweetly vicious as Chris has ever heard it.

"You sure you're further along with the processing than I am?" Chris leans back on the couch and reminding himself--not for the first time--to stay way the hell away from ever getting on Una's bad side. 

"I'll concede a little backsliding, but only because it's you I'm talking to," Una answers. "But don't think I didn't notice you dodging the question."

"She's--" Chris shrugs. "She's the same."

"Still choosing the Talosian un-reality over everything else, you mean."

"She helped them help Spock," Chris says quietly. "She--"

"She absolutely could have come with us years ago," Una maintains, zeroing right in on Chris' doubt. "She chose not to. You did not abandon her." She lets that sink in for a few seconds and then adds, grudgingly, "I can understand her fears about leaving. I _do_. I’d plot the fastest course myself if she asked to leave now and you wanted to turn the ship around and go get her; but I draw the line at the manipulation they--and she--use as a matter of course."

"She told me that they'd made a projection of me for her."

"I'm… not even going to comment on that," Una says, and Chris isn't sure he's ever seen her show such distaste, "except to say that by comparison, there is _nothing_ wrong with your judgement on Xahea."

"You said it was complicated yourself," Chris points out.

"I'm not saying it's not. As for your personal reservations, I'll grant you the mess on Talos IV, plus whatever happened on Boreth that you feel you can't share."

"Una--" Chris sighs. They've been over this. Extensively.

"Yes, monks, mystics, sacred duties, et cetera," Una answers with a wave of her hand and an uncharacteristic edge to her voice. "So you've said. And I know I've said how little patience I have for those sorts of things, even before I add in it affecting my captain."

"There's a comeback there involving not knowing you cared, but that would be a lie," Chris says, smiling gratefully at her. "I-- wouldn't even know where to start."

"I'm not saying you should. I just think you shouldn't pretend it isn't a complication."

"I'm trying."

"I think this is where I'm supposed to say that that's all one can ask, but I know you expect more of yourself, so I'll go with something along the lines of remembering that there's more than just you involved here, and from everything I know of Ensign Tilly, she's not going to hold it against you if you ask for a little help."

"You're right," Chris says, but it's probably without much conviction, judging from the silently arched eyebrow being aimed at him. "No, you are. I just--"

"Haven’t quite rid your subconscious of antiquated notions of partnership that are being exacerbated by the age difference in this one in particular?"

Chris winces, because no one can cut to the chase quite like his first officer. "It's more that I don't think it's fair to dump all of that on her." The eyebrow arches higher. "Okay, fine, it's a big gap."

"And now that we've actually said that out loud, allow me to point out that yes, Tilly is young, but she's survived the war _and_ her version of it came with a commanding officer straight from hell. I'm not sure how many years that adds, but it certainly compensates for quite a few."

"I'm not sure that's how I want this to play out."

"Well," Una says, "it might not be all about what you want."

"I should probably remember that, shouldn't I?"

"Try very, very hard, and we might get out of this without blowing up the emotional minefield around us, for which I would be exceedingly grateful."

❦ ❦ ❦

"Chriiis," Tilly whines breathlessly. She wishes she could be smooth and sultry, but she’s been bent over the bed and he's been fucking her for, like, an hour and she's getting kinda desperate. 

"Yeah, Red?" Chris shifts his hands where they’re holding her hips and pushes into her again with the same steady slow pace. "Something you wanted?"

"An orgasm would be awesome," Tilly answers, groaning as he goes deep, delicious pressure against the exact right spot inside her. "Before I go totally gray would be even more awesome."

"You know I’ll get you there." He shifts to short, hard thrusts, nailing her perfectly every time, like the over-achieving hero from a romance holo he is. "I know you do—you were pretty loud about it earlier.”

He's smiling when she turns to glare at him over her shoulder and grit out, "Past performance is no guarantee of future good times."

"I think I should be insulted by that." Chris doesn't look like he's taken any offense, though, not with that smirk on his face. Tilly's suddenly struck by the sheer insanity of the whole situation: who in the galaxy would have bet on her being naked and half-crazy because Chris Pike likes to drive people off the edge when he fucks them? She can't help grinning back at him just because it's _so_ ludicrous, still, after weeks of just this happening, which does _nothing_ to change her situation for the better. Because of course he just takes it as his due and keeps teasing her unmercifully.

Tilly drops her head back down and whimpers. Chris leans down over her, though, bracing himself on his elbows on either side of her shoulders, and that's glorious, the whole length of her back with all that skin-to-skin contact, even before he's nosing her hair aside, his mouth moving across the top of her shoulders, along her neck.

"I'll take care of you, Red," he murmurs. "I like the way it feels when you come on my cock too much to drag it out for long." 

"That's a really relative term," Tilly mutters, but Chris does start moving a little more purposefully, and Tilly arches up into him, skin to skin all over everythere, his legs solid and strong between hers and she swears she could get drunk on just the feel of it all.

"I like the way it feels, too," she answers, turning her head so she can catch the side of his mouth in a messy, uncoordinated kiss. "You feel so good in me," she whispers, and he groans softly, like he can't help himself, which is like breaking the on/off switch on her mouth. "Love how you feel, everywhere, where you're touching me, where you're fucking me--" Chris pushes into her hard at that and she has to stop to catch her breath, but then her brain is off and running, not shutting up for anything. "Yeah, baby, like that, fuck me hard, do it, come on, I won't break--" She reaches back and claws at him, urging him on, "C'mon, Chris, finish it the way I know you want to--"

He's close now, but he still won't let her touch herself, which is just all kinds of frustrating, but also not a surprise at all, because he really, _really_ likes to take care of everything, so Tilly relaxes into the rhythm and lets her mouth run wild, barely paying attention to everything that's spilling out of it, but she thinks it's when she's telling him he can fuck her anywhere he wants, use her mouth, her tits, her ass, that tips him over the edge and she finally gets what she needs: his hands working her clit, quick and rough and perfect, and she's keening into the mattress, her body tightening almost painfully around his cock as he drives into her one last time.

It takes her a long time to come down from it all; Chris has already gone and gotten a cloth to clean them both up and is back for his excellent post-sex cuddling before she can form actual words again. 

"You can, you know," Tilly mumbles as she drapes herself over him and tucks her head up under his chin, his shoulder the best pillow ever. Chris hums a wordless question, his hand stroking gentle and warm along the length of her back, and she answers, not very coherently, "Do stuff."

Chris _mmm_ 's again, but Tilly's crashing hard from the come-down, all the endorphin rush fading and leaving her drained, so she decides they can talk about it in the morning and lets him lull her to sleep.

Of course, the dreams come with a vengeance that night and she’s in the suit again, only this time it’s Michael’s suit and it doesn’t recognize Tilly's DNA or her fail-safe coordinates so she's lost in time forever, her breath and heart echoing loudly in her ears, no one to find her or save her or even know that she exists, eternity staring her in the face--

Tilly jolts herself awake and manages to calm down without waking Chris up, which is, frankly, a miracle, because he doesn't sleep worth shit. She'd really like to know how long that's been going on, because usually stuff like that gets out on starships, but she also acknowledges that for all his genial openness, Chris does hold himself really private. So, his sleeping or not isn't something they talk about; he's (unsurprisingly) really good at steering any attempts at conversation around it. Tilly's tried a couple of times, but is currently in a holding pattern, trying to decide what to do about it. Tonight, she just counts her breathing in and out and tucks herself as close to him as she can. She's already freaked out on him once; she doesn't need it to become a regular habit.

It takes long enough for Tilly to get back to sleep that she's too out-of-it to bring up delicate topics when Chris' alarm goes off in the morning. It's not until after they have sleepy, lazy sex (where he gets her off twice) and she goes back to sleep for another few hours that she remembers she wanted to actually _talk_ about them and sex, and by then, Chris is back on the _Enterprise_ and warping off to see what they can find next.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Captain," Spock says as the two of them pick their way along a ridge high above the steely gray oceans of the exo-planet they've been in orbit around. Chris can hear skitterings in the underbrush on the other side of what he's optimistically calling a path and there are small reptilian creatures watching from the rocks. "Was there a particular reason you assigned me to this away mission?"

His gaze takes in the--admittedly scenic, but otherwise ordinary--view before it returns, pointedly, to Chris.

"Oh, no," Chris admits. "So far as we could tell from orbit, there's nothing here that requires your specific expertise."

"Then I am unsure as to why I, specifically, am here." Spock stops and looks out at the ocean. "To be perfectly frank, I am unsure why you are here either."

"Well, that would be because Number One has been having a few… concerns and decided this would be the best way to address them."

"The First Officer of the ship feels that her professional concerns would be best addressed by sending her captain and science officer on a recreational nature hike?"

"I… admit it's a bit unorthodox, but I'll let you in on a little secret, Spock," Chris says lightly. "I find that my ship runs better when I follow Number One's suggestions, so I do try to do it as often as I can."

"Except for those occasions when you do not," Spock points out.

Chris acknowledges the point with a small, half-shrug. "Except when I don't," he agrees. "And you'll notice it's generally a disaster when it happens. I try to save it for major issues that are going to be a disaster regardless."

It usually happens when Chris' optimism is running away from Una's pessimistic streak and often in what tends to be an existential and moral crisis, but that's a little deep for the current conversation, so Chris keeps that to himself.

"Which means that in this case, you are in agreement with her," Spock says stiffly.

"Possibly," Chris sighs. "I'm not sure if her judgement isn't a little compromised in this matter, but I know mine is, so I thought I'd save my not-agreeing-with-her card for something a little more cut-and-dried."

"Then this is not in reference to any specific complaint you--or she--might have about my performance as science officer," Spock says, still pretty stiff, even for a Vulcan, but possibly easing off a bit.

"Oh, no, no," Chris says. "If it were anything like that, it'd be addressed head on. Your work, as always, is exemplary. Highest standard. It's been a privilege to watch you mature as an officer."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'm guessing--because she didn't pull me aside and give me a detailed--or really any--outline of her concerns--that this has to do with our Talosian encounter last year." Chris waits for a second, but Spock unsurprisingly doesn't comment on the matter, so he sighs and continues, "Number One does not like, trust, or in any way want to tolerate _anything_ to do with the Talosians, so I'm assuming she gave us time to discuss it on our own, but since we've not taken that opportunity, has maneuvered us down here so we could speak freely about it."

"It is a Restricted sector," Spock says. "Due to our own warnings, which makes it somewhat difficult to introduce the topic as a light conversational gambit."

"Especially since we weren't supposed to be back there in the first place."

"I could not see any other path to resolving the anomalies presented by my visions, but I admit that I might not have been thinking entirely logically at the time."

"No, I understand your thought processes, and they did, as you said, resolve much of the confusion," Chris says. "I think Number One's concerns are more that she can't bring herself to trust that the, uh, Keepers didn't exceed their bounds in assisting you."

"I am not aware of any tampering beyond the resolution of the visions," Spock says thoughtfully. "Though it is possible that they could have done so and hidden it from me."

"Yeah, that way leads down some pretty scary roads of not knowing what's actually real," Chris sighs. "I've found it best to address it as straightforwardly as possible."

Spock thinks for a moment, and then says, "It would seem that since I asked them for specific assistance there is a difference between our experiences."

"No, you're right," Chris says. "There was consent involved, at least with you."

"Yes," Spock answers, "though they used that consent to coerce Michael's agreement, which I find distasteful even now."

"You can see where Number One's basis for concern originates," Chris says. 

"I do," Spock says. "And I assume that she also had a sound basis for her concerns with respect to you, as well, Captain."

It's not even a question, which shouldn't surprise Chris even as mildly as it does. 

"Of course," Chris sighs. "This last trip, they … communicated with _Discovery_ through less than standard means." Spock arches an eyebrow and Chris sighs again. "They sent projections to me; and Number One is skirting around asking me point-blank if it's triggered more of the uncertainties that followed our first expedition."

"Ah," Spock says. "Then perhaps it is I who should do the asking, sir. _Has_ it triggered any uncertainties?"

And, oh, but Number One is _smart_ , not that there's anything new about that. With her or Phil, Chris would have answered with an easy smile and a denial, but with one of his junior officers, Spock especially, she knows how much emphasis Chris puts on modeling mental health best practices, especially the ability to admit when something is wrong rather than pretending everything's under control. He'd seen too many disasters stemming from that inability to ask for help and has been determined to counter-program as much as possible.

So good, Chris marvels as Spock stands waiting with not quite the usual gloss of Vulcan calm. Clearly, she had seen something she'd thought Spock needed, too, and had taken care of all of it with one, boring Away team mission.

"Far fewer than I expected," Chris answers with a rueful smile. "I've had a pretty good run of random nightmares that I would deeply appreciate never seeing again, but, at least with knowing what's really in front of me, I seem to be on fairly solid ground." 

Spock is silent for a while, but it's the kind of quiet Chris has learned to let play out if at all possible. Finally, he says, "I find myself drawing upon my meditation practice more frequently, even now."

"It was a rough year," Chris says. "To be honest, I'm surprised it's all been as mild as it has." He kicks free a rock, fist-sized and relatively smooth, and throws it as far as he can out into the oceans. "Maybe it's that they were very focused on relaying practical information rather than digging through my brain for what they thought might be unspoken wants they could manipulate." He watches the waves crashing at the foot of cliffs for a bit, before he adds, "Or possibly it's just that the events that followed your joining us on _Discovery_ were so… unique that I didn't have time to wonder." 

Following that thought to its logical extension brings him back around to Tilly, who is most definitely real and alive and not someone Chris had ever expected to have in his life, especially not as she is now, so it's never even crossed his mind that she could be something less than who she spectacularly is. 

"Then we would appear to be in agreement that we have not been unduly affected by our second brush with Talosian projections," Spock says, clearly finished with any discussion of emotion. Chris counts the conversation as a win in both directions, so he doesn't press for more. 

"It would appear so, Mr. Spock," Chris answers, even if the majority of his brain is stubbornly engaged with his relationship with Tilly and how it's nothing like he expected when he'd first started visiting Xahea. He'd been focused on supporting her through the transition back from the future, but right from the first, there'd been so much more than that between them. 

"Then you would have no objections to our immediate return to the _Enterprise_?" 

"None at all." Chris is still preoccupied with Tilly and how difficult it's proving not to throw everything he has into their deepening relationship, balanced against how he still can't see a path forward where he doesn't have to saddle her with everything that went along with the time crystal.

"Very good, sir, as I have actual analyses that I am committed to completing."

Chris comes out of his reverie at the exaggerated patience in his Science Officer's voice and marvels at how Spock's long-suffering expression so perfectly matches the tone of his voice. The best thing about being a captain, though--aside from actually commanding the ship--is getting to present that bland, boring facade to cover up any particular lapses on his own part.

"Of course, Spock, have them beam us up at your leisure." 

Chris manages not to smile at the exasperation Spock is only minimally masking, but only until they get back up to the ship and Spock heads off to deal with his analyses, leaving Chris to grin all the way back to the bridge.

❦ ❦ ❦

"So," Po says, a little teasing, but mostly serious. "What's it like, being with the Captain?"

It’s just two of them in Tilly’s apartment and now that Tilly’s actually looking, Chris has all kinds of crap scattered around (which she totally loves, don’t get her wrong), so Po’s question isn’t as much of a non sequitur as it might seem.

"It's," Tilly says slowly, "different? than I expected."

"Different, good?" Po's watching with careful eyes, like she's braced for the answer to be 'no', which is really not what Tilly meant.

"I--" Tilly scrunches up her mouth and nose while she considers. "It's not _bad_ , it's just…" She sighs. "The thing about Chris, like beyond the dimples, and the eyes, and the--

"Ass?" Po interjects, and Tilly half-shrugs, because, yeah? 

"—and the whole Silver Fox thing he's working, is how, I don't know--grounded he is?" Tilly considers it for a few seconds. "Yeah, grounded--ground _ing_. Like, you know how he is on the bridge and all hell is breaking loose and he's just doing his thing, keeping everybody from flying off the handle and flipping out…?"

"Yep," Po says. "Suuuper calm even when there are hundreds of bot-ships trying to kill him."

"Yes," Tilly agrees. "And, like, as a captain, he was always really focused on the crew and his ship and what he needed to do for everyone, and you could always go see him if you had a problem or needed somebody to be a sounding board. It was unexpectedly deep, especially after Lor--"

"The asshole," Po says. "The unbelievable asshole."

"Yeah, him," Tilly says. "And I guess, I was, I don't know, kind of expecting that in a relationship, too. That personal focus. I was even worried for a while that I wouldn't be able to deal with what I was assuming would be a crap-ton more of it for a relationship. But, you know what it's like--he gets here and we're _off_ , and the next thing I know, I'm BASE-jumping off one of those bridges in the south or he's making friends with an entire village and getting us invited to that feast day or a million other things. And then we get someplace private and go to bed and--don't get me wrong, the sex is freaking _amazing_ , but it's always focused on me--"

"Poor widdle Tilly," Po says dryly.

"I _know_ , okay? I know, I have this hot, sweet, funny--"

"Hot," Po repeats.

"Hot," Tilly agrees, and continues, "amazing guy who makes me _scream_ he's so good with his mouth, and-- "

"And?" Po prompts.

"And then he's gone," Tilly says. "I don't think I've ever gotten him off just to get him off, and we don't lay around and you know, just make out or talk or hang out or… anything that's not specific and focused and part of a plan, really. It's like we're still just running around being buddies and then we have sex, the end." She chews on her bottom lip thoughtfully. "I kinda thought him asking about more of a relationship wouldn't mean just buddyfucking, I guess."

"Okay," Po says, thoughtfully. "Again, I really have to say, 'poor you,' what with the screaming and all--but I accept the thesis that it didn't really seem like he was going for a friends-with-benefits scenario. And if we stipulate that, this doesn't really square with how our super-hot Captain Thoughtful would do a relationship, so… Possible reasons?"

This is why, Tilly thinks, that Po's such a good friend for Tilly, specifically. Most other supportive friends would be all sympathetic and the conversation would fall into a giant bitch-fest abyss, but Po's beautiful, analytical brain is already engaged and Tilly can relax and let it work with her own.

"I mean, I can maybe see how it's the age thing?" Po says. "He doesn't want you to feel like it's a big deal, so he's going way the other way to make the magic happen? Or," she _mmm_ s a little, "you were a little freaked about being back here, so he's doing his best to show you a good time?"

"I did kinda lose it after we had sex the first time," Tilly says, dropping her face into her hands in mortification. "Like, sneaking out of bed and crying in the shower losing-it."

"Yeah? How'd he take that?"

"He picked me up and let me snot all over him and cuddled me 'til I fell asleep," Tilly answers into her hands. "And then ate me out the next morning and fucked me until I almost blacked out." 

"Til," Po says, laughing.

"I know," Tilly wails. "It's freaking awesome -- and all wrong, all at the same time."

"Then, I guess you've got three choices: talk, pretend it's not bothering you, break up."

"Oh, god," Tilly groans. " _Talk_ to him? Like, say, 'Chris, you're a stud, but I need the feels,' talk to him like that?"

"You're not doing so great with the pretending, and seriously, I'm not seeing breaking up as a valid option at the moment." Po shrugs. "Talking doesn't seem so bad if you think about it that way."

"I guess," Tilly says in her best tragic voice. The thing is, she can see another reason for the distance that Po hasn't mentioned, and it's that the whole thing is a giant exercise in pity fucking, which she unfortunately can see happening with Captain I-Take-Care-Of-My-People Pike. Not when they're actually in his command, obviously, but she bets he has a metric fuck-ton of friends-with-benefits across the galaxy that he'd be glad to cheer up with a little mind-blowing sex. She's not sure if she wants to be another one, but Po's probably right and it's better to know what's going on. "The next time I see him, 'cause no way am I having this conversation over vid screens."

"As long as it's _before_ he starts taking your clothes off," Po warns. "Your brain is mush by the time he's done with you. Not that I'm judging."

"So true," Tilly groans and lays her head down on the table. "Why is everything so complicated?"

"Life," Po says philosophically, and there's not really anything Tilly can argue with that.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Okay," Tilly is saying as Chris comes into her apartment, unbuttoning his collar and breathing a little easier just from seeing her. "Okay, I--we--I need to talk to you, so can you please not kiss me right now?"

"Okay," Chris answers cautiously. "Is there a problem?" 

"No--well, yes--maybe?" Tilly remains firmly behind the couch, clearly using it as a bulwark against him. "And if you kiss me, we'll get--" She waves her hand in a vaguely explicit gesture. "Distracted."

Chris tries hard not to smile, but, yeah, they do tend to get distracted. He's actually been taken off-guard by how intense their sex life has turned out to be. "Point taken," he says.

"Okay," Tilly says, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Thank you. I just--oh, god…"

"Til?" Chris says, starting to get concerned.

"I'm just going to say this, okay?" She looks like she's going to throw up, but she blurts out, "I feel like maybe you don't really want to be with me, but you're a nice guy and don't want to make me sad so you're kinda just showing up and going through the motions because it's only once every couple of weeks--"

"Whoa," Chris barks, a little more sharply than the situation probably warrants, but a dozen alarms are--belatedly--going off in his head. "Tilly, what is going on?" 

"Kinda that," she says. "What I said. I mean, we have a good time and, y'know, the sex is fantastic, but I don't know what else is going on." 

"I'm--Can I come in so we can sit down?" Chris says. "I promise, no distractions, but this doesn't look to be something we're just going to solve in a couple of words." 

She looks miserable, but nods, and he drops his duffel next to the door to join her on the couch. 

"Okay," Chris says. "Start from the beginning, but, Red, believe me when I say I'm not sacrificing myself here, being with you." She smiles a little at the nickname, but it's nothing like the beautiful ones that never fail to remind him that life is good. "Trust me, I'm not that nice of a guy."

She doesn't smile at that one, but she doesn't throw him out, so Chris counts it a draw and makes sure he's paying attention to everything--not just what she's saying, but what she's not, and most especially to her eyes. Everything plays out there with her and Chris needs to not miss a thing.

"I guess," she says slowly, "I didn't think a relationship with you would be so… at arms' length, emotionally speaking." She looks up and meets his eyes, not hiding anything, and Chris is reminded that she really doesn't ever back down from a situation, but just attacks it head-on. "Maybe that's what you want and I've just been… assuming otherwise or maybe this whole situation is just too crazy and it's not really a good time for a relationship that goes deep."

"I--" Chris starts, but she holds up a hand and he lets her keep going, mostly because he's--inexcusably--not sure what he's going to say in the first place.

"Or, let's be real," she says. "I did completely freak out on you and if you're backing off because of that, I don't blame you--"

"No," Chris says firmly, because her blaming herself for this is completely unacceptable. "Not at _all_."

"Okay," she says after a few seconds, but Chris can see that she's not entirely convinced. "Or, if--if you think I need something that's larger-than-life, I really, really don't, so if this is a buddy-fuck situation for you, that's, y'know, okay, it's just that I'm really not up for being the receiving end of a pity-fuck--"

"Tilly," Chris says, "stop, please." She does, but he can tell he's not going to have much time. That's probably for the best, though, so he doesn't have time to dodge out of what he clearly needs to own up to.

"You're not wrong about the distance," he says. "But that's not you, that's me." 

Tilly makes a low, hurt noise and he realizes how that sounds. "I--damn, no, not like that--"

"'Yeah, baby, it's not you, it's me,'" she says as she jolts to her feet and paces away from the couch. "I'm such an idiot; I should have just kept my stupid mouth shut--" She takes a deep breath and then says, "I meant it; I am not okay with being a pity-fuck, poor little lost Tilly, so if that's it, we can let it all go right now."

"This is not that, I swear." Chris reaches out carefully, not breathing until she meets him halfway to let him take her hand. "I'm sorry--I--There is a reason, but it doesn't have anything to do with you." He drops his gaze to where he's stroking his thumb over her knuckles softly. He should have realized from the start that they were in too deep to half-ass things, but he still has no idea what he's supposed to do with everything the crystal had shown him. "I should have brought this up right from the first, but I--the truth is, I didn't want anything to get in the way of this." When he looks up, her face is so achingly open and vulnerable that he'd do anything to not have to explain. "Us."

"Chris," Tilly breathes, nothing but care and compassion in her eyes. Unsurprisingly, Una had been right to remind him that he isn't actually alone in this. It probably would have been better not to let it get to this point, but now that they're here, it's time to stop pretending.

"How much interaction did you have with the time crystal?" Chris asks. "On _Discovery_ , before it shattered here."

"Okay, subject whiplash," Tilly says, but when he can't manage a smile, she sobers quickly and answers, "None." She shakes her head. "Michael and Commander Reno were the only ones who even got near the crystal. No exceptions." 

Chris nods; he'd thought he knew Burnham well enough to know she would have locked down access to that crystal, but he hadn't been sure that Tilly might not have been an exception.

"They--the crystals--don't just manipulate time, they--carry time within their matrix, is the best way I can explain it. When I went to get the crystal on Boreth, I--when I got close to it, it showed me a future that I could leave behind only if I didn't take the crystal. Which we had to have."

"I'm guessing it didn't show you anything good," Tilly whispers.

"No," Chris says, as evenly as he can. "It showed me--" He looks at her squarely, so she doesn't think he's dodging her question, but also because the only way he's going to get through this is with the strength he always sees in her eyes. "There was a radiation accident, on an old J-Class cruiser." Somehow, Tilly has both his hands in hers, and she's holding onto him for dear life. "It didn't kill me, but." Chris finds himself holding on to Tilly's hands as tightly as she had been clinging to him. "There wasn't much left."

"You," Tilly breathes. "When I was checking things, while I was setting the fail-safes for my suit in the space-time continuum, I was mainly looking up Po, so I could see if she'd be in a position to take me on if I landed on her, but, you know, it's hard not to be curious, and you--the surviving Starfleet records just said that you retired off-world in 2268."

"I--there wasn't any real indication of time," Chris manages to say. "There was--my insignia in the vision was a Fleet Captain, but--"

"Yeah," Tilly whispers. "Fleet Captain Christopher Pike, retired off-world. I--thought you probably had it out one too many times with the Admiralty and just took off."

"That's actually not a bad guess; have you been intercepting my reports?" Chris half-jokes. It's not remotely successful, given the stricken look in Tilly's eyes, but he's trying and he thinks she knows that.

"And you didn't tell me all this before now, because…?" Tilly shakes her head. "You thought I'd run the other direction?"

"No," Chris sighs. "Not at all."

"Okay, I'm really confused now."

"Tilly," Chris says. "You don't need to tie your life to that...horror. I should have told you sooner, but I'm telling you now and that still applies. You're young and you have your whole life--" 

"Okay, stop," Tilly says, sharp and to-the-point. "Just-- _stop_." She tugs her hands free and stands up to pace. 

Chris does stop, but hopes she knows that doesn't change anything.

"You know," Tilly says slowly, "I'm pretty sure whether or not I want to deal with a complication in a relationship or not have the relationship at all… That's _my_ decision to make." She meets his eyes unequivocally and he can see the first stirrings of anger there. "Also, is that really what you think of me? I should walk now so I'm not fucking you when it happens? Like _that's_ going to make it so it wouldn't matter to me if you've taken a radiation blast head-on? _Seriously?_ "

"No," Chris says seriously. "I don't think that about you, but if we're not… together, you wouldn't be trapped--"

"Oh, my God, shut _up_ ," Tilly snaps, and for the first time, Chris feels a flare of anger that he doesn't automatically shut down or do his best to ignore.

"No," he snarls. "Somebody has to say it, no matter how much you don't want to hear it."

"What I don't want to hear is _you_ telling _me_ how you know what's best for me," Tilly fires right back. "Because everything that's been said tonight is all about that, and I will cut you some slack because that--that is a fucking awful thing to be carrying around, but telling me what I need to do and feel is not your _job_ and it wouldn't be even if you were still my captain and my mentor instead of the, the _idiot_ I'm falling in love with."

"Tilly," Chris says, stricken, the anger draining out of him in a flood. He's well and truly an idiot to have let things get this far, to have dragged her down to this point no matter how deep his own feelings have run.

"Oh, like that's such a surprise," Tilly snipes, clearly still furious with him. "Please do not tell me you're that willfully blind."

"I'm not," Chris says, with a sigh. "I think I didn't want to have this conversation and was pretending to myself that nothing had really changed."

"Well, let's be real, it's not all that big of a step from where I was to start." Tilly shakes her head. "But we're here now, and yeah, you should have told me earlier-- _that_ was really shitty decision-making, Chris--but you don't get to decide for me now, either." She stops her restless pacing to stand right in front of him. "And it's really _epic_ levels of shitty that you've been acting on that unilateral decision the whole time, because that's what all the holding back has been about, isn't it?"

Chris never really forgets that the bubbly enthusiasm that Tilly wears to greet the world is just the gift wrap on a keen, insightful mind, but occasionally he gets a pointed reminder of all of that and has to reevaluate his own actions by that light.

"Mostly," Chris says, and then adds,"But it's also a little that I--it's easier not to engage. At all."

He hasn't ever said that last part even to himself, but he thinks Una has been leaving hints about it for quite some time now. 

"Yeah," Tilly says quietly, and when Chris looks, all of her anger has drained away, and there's a sad grayness in its place. Chris hates seeing it, more than almost anything else he can think of. "It is."

He reaches up and she lets him take her hands again. If Chris is being honest with himself, he might have reached the touch to comfort her, but that grip is maybe one of the few things that's keeping him grounded. When she pulls away, though, he lets her. He expects her to move away from him completely, but she only wraps her arms around herself.

"Except," Tilly says, almost more to herself than to Chris, "it's not. Not really."

"No," Chris agrees. Not engaging had been fine, before Tilly had crash-landed back into his life and he'd ended up trying to midwife one of the most important treaties in Federation history, not to mention the part where he hadn't been able to keep out of an actual emotional entanglement--even just the friendship they'd had was closer to someone than he'd allowed himself to get in a year. "But it's less--"

"Scary," Tilly suggests, with a tiny, but real smile. "Sorry, Starfleet officers aren't supposed to admit to that, are they?"

"No, but there are a lot of things I could change about Starfleet and its expectations."

A silence falls then and stretches out. It's not quite comfortable, but Tilly is still the one to break it.

"What do you want to do?" she asks. "About us."

Chris knows what he should be saying--to let it be, let the relationship fade--but instead hears himself saying, "I think that's something you should be answering, since you're right and I've been deciding for both of us."

It goes quiet again and Chris isn't sure what he wants less--to watch Tilly walk away or to have to put that into action himself.

"I want it," Tilly says finally. "I mean, we _seriously_ need to talk about agency and thinking for the other person, but I started this whole conversation because I couldn't square what was going on with what I wanted. Which is _everything_ , Chris. Everything." She sighs and bites her lip. "But that's me. I don't know about you."

"I--" 

"Not what you think you should be saying," Tilly says, correctly interpreting his hesitation. "Because that's all tied up with you trying to take care of me."

"Which is something I absolutely should be doing," Chris says. "I--care about you a great deal, Til. I take care of people I care about."

"I get that," she says quietly. "I love that about you, I do, but you can't go making decisions for me." She reaches out and brushes the hair back off his face, and Chris almost can't breathe at how good it--just the casual intimacy of it all--feels. "If you don't want to--engage, for lack of a better word, because it's too much for you, then, okay, I guess. I mean, I won't like it and I don't think it's good for you, but if that's your decision, I'll deal."

It's right there, right in front of him. She's told him flat-out she'll be okay; all Chris has to do is say the words. Chris opens his mouth to say them and can't force any of them out. 

"It might be better--" he starts, and then corrects himself, "no, it probably will be better to step back…" 

Tilly never looks away from him and he can't make himself say it.

"I do want this," Chris says instead. It's not right, he knows that, but Tilly is smiling at him and he can't lie to her. "I want you-- _us_ \--" He breaks off to catch her as she throws herself at him and lets himself pretend that how good she feels in his arms is enough of a reason to not break this off. "I'm still not--"

"I know," Tilly says. "It's not perfect, but really, what is?" 

"True," Chris admits, and he does know that life with her is better than he was managing on his own. 

"Okay, then," Tilly says, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I think my ban on distractions has reached its natural conclusion, so…"

"I'll get right on that," Chris says, threading his hand through her hair so he can tilt her head back to kiss her. He _should_ have broken it off; it's all on him that he'd been too much of a coward to do what was right, but he can still do his best to make it right by Tilly before it all blows up in their face.

❦ ❦ ❦

Po's apartments in the palace are about what you'd expect if you actually know her. Everything is neat and tidy--as much because Po is pretty detail-oriented about being able to see everything she has or know exactly where everything is, but every single surface is covered with one project or another. They're the same rooms she had as a princess; technically, she'd moved into the queen's rooms after her coronation, but everyone had looked at all her stuff and cringed at the thought of carrying it across the palace grounds and she'd just never moved. Tilly is pretty sure the only time she spends in her official bedroom is when she wants to be close to the memory of her mom. 

They--Tilly and Po--have dinner in her apartments as often as Po's schedule is open. Even when Chris is around, as long as he and Tilly aren't off on one of his escapades, they tend to end up hanging out there a lot of the evenings. Tilly likes that, but building her friendship with Po is really, she thinks, what's kept her sane since she's bounced back from the future and lost all of her friends.

"I've got a question for you," Po says while she's tinkering with the replicator she's never finished with modifying. It's like her engineer version of worry beads or a mantra; she plays with it whenever she needs to even out after a long day of being queenly. "It's a favor, but you should feel free to say no."

"Okay?" Tilly answers. Po has a lot of issues about people always deferring to her because she's the queen, but technically, she was Tilly's friend before she was that, so Tilly wouldn't be not turning her down because she's the queen, but because Tilly tries hard to never disappoint a friend. She sets aside the kids' grammar file she's been using to and learn to read the Xahean script; since she's gotten her brain re-set to think of it as more cuneiform than an alphabet, things have been progressing, even if it's still pretty slow.

"There's a healer, at the university across the city," Po says, and something about her voice makes Tilly look up and really pay attention. "She's extraordinary."

"Okay," Tilly says. Po never uses that word, except when she's talking about her mom. 

"She--I was talking with her, about her work." Po doesn't look up from the replicator, but her hands slow and her voice is strained. "One of the bad things that happened when Xahea found out about dilithium and how valuable it is, was that people tried to use it past its effectiveness, tried to cheap out and not replace it."

Tilly has a sick feeling about where this is going, which is confirmed when Po says, very, very quietly, "There were some terrible accidents with dark matter before people understood the dangers. And," she breathes in deliberately, "it's almost never the people forcing the issue who get hurt."

"No," Tilly agrees sadly. 

Po looks up with serious eyes. "Even with the incubator, the re-crystallized dilithium still has to be re-installed, and sometimes…"

"Accidents happen," Tilly says quietly.

"Yeah, accidents happen."

"So, the healer…?" Tilly prompts. "She works with the accident victims?"

"She does research, working with them and just anyone who knows anything about dark matter healing. My brother met with her and made sure she had everything she needed, and now, I do that," Po says. "And the last time we met, she talked about this one inquiry that's maybe promising, but she doesn't have much to go on, and… she says she's found some references to it as _P. stellaviatori_."

"The mycelial spores?" Tilly asks. She puts the PADD she's using to study with down before it's impossible to hide the sudden trembling in her hands. There's no reason that she can see to suddenly be flashing back to that first horrible breath when May had taken her into the network, but that's where she's at, just for a fraction of a second.

"Maybe," Po says. She clearly hasn't noticed Tilly freaking out, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it'd felt. "So I thought maybe you could talk with her?"

"I--" Tilly answers, trying to stay calm, at least outwardly. "Maybe?" 

"I mean, you were there, actually in it," Po's saying and that pretty much pushes Tilly right over the edge, which _makes no sense_ , because she'd been the one to tell Po about it in the first place and nothing like this had happened, and did she mention how this just didn't make sense and she'd really appreciate some sort of consistency in her brain and its reactions?

Tilly hears Po realize there's something wrong and switch over to soothing mode, but it's all distant and indistinct, as though Tilly's underwater, but then Po's holding her hands and Tilly can feel it, like normal, and she holds onto that and manages to remember to breathe. Po counts with her, breathing in for three and out to five, _and again, Til, you're doing great_ , and Tilly finally zooms back into Po's bedroom.

"Holy crap," Tilly gasps. "Like, what the hell is going on with my brain?"

"Well, I did just bring up the time you got kidnapped into an alternate universe against your will," Po points out.

" _Years_ ago," Tilly answers, gulping down the rest of the mostly lukewarm tea Po's housekeeper always brings by. "And I barely freaked out this bad when it actually happened."

She puts her head down on the table and keeps on breathing. 

"It's been a weird year," Po says. "Trauma recovery isn't linear."

"I guess," Tilly answers. Now that her brain isn't completely freaking out, she thinks about what Po's been saying. "I'd like to help your healer friend, but…"

"Yeah, no, you having a panic attack at the thought isn't going to really help much," Po says. "And she's not my, you know, friend. She's, just, someone the queen knows."

There's something about Po's voice that makes Tilly take notice and when she picks her head up off the table and looks, Po is paying very, very, very close attention to the replicator she's been tinkering with. Since this roughly translates to Einstein focusing completely on junior high math, Tilly says slowly, "Po? Is there something going on?"

" _No_ ," Po says. Then she sighs and says it again, but more softly and, Tilly is sure, sadly. "No. There's nothing that could go on." Tilly stays quiet and after a little while longer, Po adds, still without looking up, "Maybe if I was still the princess, but now that I'm queen…" 

She shakes her head, yet another variation on 'no'.

"You said she was extraordinary," Tilly says quietly.

"She is," Po answers. "Dealing with all … _this_ \--" she gestures at the room and the tea set that Tilly knows is hundreds of years old and the coronet sitting on the edge of the table where Po had dropped it as soon as she'd come in from her afternoon reception. "It's not what she does and I don't even know how to ask her to try."

"That doesn't mean you won't ever know," Tilly tells her. 

"Maybe."

"Crazier things have happened. I mean, we're talking about alternate universes and spores and--you know, Chris came and got me from there, I mean, drove the ship halfway in and sent out a rescue party, and now…" Tilly shrugs. "Anybody who told me then that I'd be here with him now would have gotten packed off to MedBay for a full psych workup."

"Like I said, it's been quite a year," Po says.

"I want to help," Tilly says. "I'll work on it and see how it goes."

"Thanks, Til," Po says and Tilly nods, because there are too many words crowding in her throat for everything that's gone on in the last year. Before it gets too heavy, though, Po sits up straight and pushes the replicator forward. "Ice cream. Now."

"No argument here," Tilly answers.

❦ ❦ ❦

Chris doesn't really have many illusions about people. He does his best to follow his own principles and doesn’t pretend they don’t exist even when he’s pissing off the powers that be by doing what he thinks is right. He’s more than a little saddened by how this is seen to be exceptional or unusual, but he’s not naïve. He knows how the galaxy works, and most of the time, he’s able to shrug it off and keep moving. 

These incubator negotiations are wearing him down, though, especially once it’s clear that the major obstacle in the way of the treaty leads directly back to the corporations and governmental entities (across multiple planets) who control the dilithium mining interests and who have no desire to see their credit-generating machinery overwritten by anything, much less something from a planet only recently admitted to the Federation.

The group from Xahea that's subtly allying with them isn't helping matters much either. Chris can manage to sit quietly in the breakout rooms, as various teams work to hammer out the exact treaty language, but in the full panels, it takes every bit of self-control not to be throwing out questions about acceptable losses and making sure that everyone knows the actual human cost behind the discovery and mining and production of the dilithium chambers they're all so eager to get their hands on. 

"Captain Pike," a voice echoes down the stone hall, and Chris turns to see the senator in charge of the Federation’s negotiating team walking toward him. "A moment of your time, please?"

"Of course," Chris makes himself answer. It isn't going to be the first time he's listened to complete horseshit with an expressionless face, and, sadly enough, it probably won't be the last. And yes, he tells his inner optimistic bean counter, it _is_ going to be horseshit. There's nothing else going on by this point.

The senator lowers his voice confidentially, saying, "I know you've realized this is going nowhere."

"Well," Chris says in his blandest voice, "It hasn't seemed to be progressing to me, but then, what do I know, really. Being just Starfleet, of course."

That's probably a little too pointed, though it's nothing but a faint shadow of the attitude held toward Fleet officers by the diplomatic corps. 

"I apologize for any… indiscretions you may have suffered at the hands of my team," the senator sighs, "but I believe I have treated you fairly."

Chris inclines his head, because the senator has, more-or-less, kept from insulting him to his face, but that doesn't mean he's been happy about having Chris around. Chris is under no illusions that he's only there because he knows Po (and it really chaps the senators ass that he knows Chris has been invited to address her as such, while every single other member of the delegation is still relegated to formal terms.)

"We are very nearly at an impasse," the senator continues. "I don't believe we will be able to offer anything more in return for the incubator technology and the Xahean team is not at all inclined to accept our current terms."

"Possibly because they're not stupid?" Chris can't keep from saying. At the senator's glower, he adds, "Let cut to the chase: due to pressure from the dilithium mining industry, the Federation offer is just barely above insulting and that's before we get to the part where that same industry will do its best to bury the technology if for some reason the Xaheans take the offer."

Chris takes what's frankly an unholy amount of satisfaction in the flash of surprise the senator can't hide--after all, Chris is just the captain of a ship, and one who's known to not be heavily involved in the behind the scenes maneuvering that goes on at Fleet Command; he's not supposed to be neck deep in all the political machinations, much less be able to put all the pieces together.

"Be that as it may," the senator says, recovering quickly, "the Federation has charged us with reaching an agreement about this technology--"

"With all due respect, Senator, the Federation has charged _you_ with that." Chris knows he's walking an exceedingly fine line here, but he's apparently reached his limit on so many things. "Starfleet Command has _allowed_ me to detour off my stated mission, in the spirit of cooperation."

It takes the senator a bit longer to recover this time, and his voice isn't quite as urbane when he does finally say, "As I said before, we are rapidly reaching an impasse that will result in no treaty at all, with no benefits to either side." 

_Except for the mining interests_ , Chris thinks, but the senator is still speaking so he keeps that to himself. 

"--have escaped your notice that the queen and her chief negotiator hold Starfleet, and you in particular, in some esteem."

"We did fight a battle practically overhead," Chris points out. "You might have heard about it. We won, after all."

"Indeed, I have, Captain." The senator eyed Chris with a speculative eye that boded ill. "It's interesting that you bring this up." He pauses for a second, to see if Chris is going to react, and then continues, "I believe a personal appeal to the Xaheans from someone they find heroic might be the thing to get them to accept the terms the Federation is proposing. What do you say, Captain? Just something short, referencing the war and the sacrifices the Federation has made--"

It's probably good that Chris is seeing red, a rage blinding enough that he literally can't find the breath to speak. It gives him just enough time to rein in his fury, so that when the senator stops speaking--though Chris literally had not heard anything past the bit about Federation sacrifices--he's able to say, "Let me be sure I understand you: you would like me to invoke the memory of those I've served with, those I've fought alongside, those I've _buried_ \--" He hasn't done anything to keep the coldness from his voice, but from how the senator flinches at the word, he guesses his control is slipping more and more. It's not really something he's bothered by "--so that I can try to talk a sovereign planet, one who came to our aid against seemingly insurmountable odds, into a deal so shitty I'm ashamed to be on the offering side, all so _you_ can claim victory in this negotiation. Did I miss anything?"

Chris keeps his gaze steady, knows his eyes are flat and dangerous, and while the senator flails in his attempt at indignance, Chris lets the thought of Kat, still and calm in the split-second before the torpedo exploded play across his mind. He thinks of Pippa, bleeding out from T'Kuvma's blade while Burnham fought to get to her; of Ariam, eaten away from within but still fighting to the end; of Gabe, lost to a world so hellish the best they could hope for was that he died quickly; and when the senator is finished, he answers, "My answer, in case you hadn't already guessed, is 'no.'" He doesn't bother veiling the contempt in his eyes. "You'll excuse me, Senator. I have other places to be."

❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly's never seen Chris in such a seething rage. If she's being honest, she didn't think he could actually get as angry as he is now. He hasn't settled in one spot for even a second, just paced the length of her apartment and back again, over and over and over. _No_ , he'd answered when she'd asked if there was anything she could do; and, _No_ , again to whether she should give him some space. Tilly had gotten pretty good at keeping herself small and unobtrusive in school and (especially) with Lorca, and it's kind of depressing how easily that all comes back to her, but at least she can honestly tell herself it's not because she doesn't want attention drawn to her. It just seems like the best way to be at the moment, especially since she's almost to the point of actually reading a (children's) book in Xahean and she really wants to get in there and get it done. 

Chris is still pacing an hour later when she does finish and, having forgotten about the need for nothing-to-see-here, hisses, "YES," and throws her arms up in glee. Her timing is, as usual, impeccable: right as Chris turns the corner into the living area so that he jumps at her sudden movement, looking at her as though he'd forgotten she'd been there.

"Fuck, Red," Chris snaps. "Did you forget brief me about you and Stamets working on invisibility at any time?"

"That would be really cool," Tilly says, which probably isn't the best answer, but her mouth is always running its own show, so, oh well? "Sadly, though my answer is no. We just focused on Stamets' beloved spores and I occasionally got to play with asteroids."

Chris looks at her like he can't believe what she just said. She looks back at him evenly, because, yes, she did deliberately not take offense at him yelling like that, so the ball is in his court. He (happily enough) doesn't break her faith in him, just shakes his head and says, "Sorry for the attitude. It's nothing to do with you and I shouldn't have dragged it in here."

"Okay," Tilly says. "Apology accepted, but I would like to point out that people who are involved like we are, they're allowed to be in crappy moods. Sometimes, they can even talk to each other about it."

"I would really rather leave all of this somewhere that doesn't drag the negative energy into us," Chris says, which is hardly a surprise, but is disappointing nonetheless. Things between them have been better since The Talk (Tilly does still capitalize it in her thoughts), but there are still times when Tilly feels like she's there for fun, not for anything serious. Then again, she definitely hadn't realized how very close Chris holds himself before they started all this, and she knows she's in a lot further than almost everyone else in his life. She'd for sure like to be all in, as deep as they can go, but to be fair, she's not quite ready to let him all the way in her psyche either. 

"I know," she says. "I'm just saying it'd be okay with me if you change your mind."

"Duly noted," Chris answers and she thinks he even means it. "But tell me what had you throwing victory arms."

"Nice diversion," Tilly says dryly. "I will allow it, though, because I read my first book in Xahean, and I am feeling very celebratory about it."

"Excellent," Chris says, smiling the smile that still does amazingly crazy things to Tilly's insides. 

"Well, I mean, it's a kids' book and it took me all day--" The rest of her disclaimers are lost when Chris leans in and, threading his hand through her hair, pulls her close for a hard, deep kiss.

"You." He kisses her again. "Read." Another kiss, even more intense this time, and Tilly is starting to get a little dizzy. "A book in Xahean," he says, very firm and captain-y. "None of the idiots I'm working with have done that, I'm sure." The next kiss is long and lush and Tilly is maybe whimpering long before Chris is done with her. "And even if they have, it takes nothing away from your accomplishments."

It's really not fair how he barely sounds breathless at times like these, while Tilly can only halfway figure out which way is up. She's maybe getting a little less swept-off-her-feet, though, because she can manage to get her hand up to cup his jaw and let her thumb trace over his cheekbone, which is seriously his kryptonite (which also makes it hers, because there is nothing she doesn’t love about watching his eyes soften and go vulnerable and wanting.)

"You spoil me," she tells him. "Not that I’m going to turn down celebration kisses, but if I’m getting all this goodness for a kids’ book, what's on tap for something actually relevant?"

"I guess you'll just have to do the work and find out," Chris teases. He turns his head so he can press a kiss into her palm, and her heart does a little stutter that makes it hard to breathe. "But you’re the one who’s doing the spoiling, letting me drag all this negative energy down on top of you."

"It's not like you," Tilly says. "At least, it’s not in my experience, but I’m still figuring out what's you-you rather than what's the Captain-you." She touches his face again. 

"Sometimes, I wonder about that myself," Chris says, which feels like a big admission to Tilly, but he doesn’t say anything more and she has to be content with just that. Someday, she's going to figure out how to be someone he can dump stuff on, but it's looking like a long process.

❦ ❦ ❦

Rojas is actually less livid than Chris expects her to be when they put through the comm for her to ream him out. 

"For the love of God, Captain, _try_ not to insult Federation senators while you're in uniform."

"I'd apologize," Chris says, "but we're all lucky I didn't throw a punch, Code of Conduct or not." 

Rojas sighs. "Between the two of us, I agree." Her expression sharpens. "While did not say precisely that in response, my meaning was made perfectly clear to the senator in question--" Chris masks a wince; usually the diplomatic corps sends their underlings when they want to make their displeasure known. He's lucky Rojas is the one who took the complaint; she stands on no ceremony with the Federation. 

" _But_ , that being said, Captain," Rojas continues, "I expect better of the officers I send out, ill-mannered and disrespectful comments notwithstanding."

Chris expects better of himself, too, so he resolves to keep his mouth shut and take whatever else Rojas needs to get off her chest. As it turns out, she's more worried about him than she is interested in any reaming out.

"This is most unlike you, Chris. I've seen you side-step the most appalling of insults with a smile."

"Oh, believe me, anything you've seen is a snarl, not a smile."

"I'm aware," Rojas answers dryly. "This wasn't even a snarl."

"I--" Chris thinks about the last year and all its losses and unwelcome revelations; when he adds to that the unthinking disrespect shown to everything to which he's dedicated his life, he has to breathe through the spike of anger one more time. He knows Rojas is seeing it and it can't be anything to his credit, but he's still legitimately in white-hot fury range over it all. Finally, he gets his voice under control and says, "It's been a long few years, Ana. I could have laughed off any insult to me, personally, but to ask me to use the memories of--"

"Yes." 

"Do you want me to resign this position?" 

"They did not ask for that," Rojas says, "which leads me to believe that their negotiation stance is tenuous in the extreme and they do not want to do anything that might upset the queen in the slightest."

"I can't recommend that deal," Chris says. "I _can't_. If the Federation gets hold of that technology and the mining interests bury it, it's as good as lost." He isn't saying anything Rojas doesn't know, but he wants it all out there, crisp and clear. "You and I both know how much time and energy and blood finding new sources of dilithium costs the Federation and Starfleet. If there's the slightest chance I don't have to deliver another condolence message to one of my crew's families because they were lost while we were looking for another deposit, I will do my best to see it through."

Rojas is silent for a good ten seconds, which is an eternity for her to be thinking through the situation. She's legendary in her ability to make the right snap decision. Chris feels a little less like an over-emotional ensign for losing his temper if even Ana Rojas isn't sure which way to jump.

Finally, she sighs and says, "I believe our position-- _ours_ \--" and Chris understands that she's talking about Starfleet "--would be best served if you remained with the negotiations. Even if they fall apart, we'll still have your conduit to Her Serene Highness, which we could possibly call upon in the future." Her gaze sharpens, and even over a middling video connection, Chris can feel the weight of it. "To that end, if I could prevail upon you to maintain a professional, working relationship with the Federation team, I would be most appreciative."

"Of course," Chris answers. He's frankly surprised there isn't an order to apologize formally to the senator; Rojas must be as stratospherically furious as Chris is himself. Then again, insulting the memories of those lost in battle is never a good idea. At some point, the politicians in the Federation have to figure that out. "We're scheduled to return to Xahea in two weeks; I'll play it as professional as you like."

"I know you will," Rojas says and signs off, leaving Chris to work through exactly how he's going to keep up a good front when he's tasked with sitting in with people who hold all that he stands for in minimal respect.

"Get it done, Pike," he says to himself. "Just get it done."

❦ ❦ ❦

"Holy fucking shit," Tilly gasps as she hits the ground hard, her legs giving out on her and sending her crumpling to her knees. "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit." She's shaking so hard she can barely breathe and her vision is starting to tunnel in. 

"Tilly," Chris says, somehow right in front of her, but she can't make her arms work even well enough to grab him. "Tilly, breathe, sweetheart; it's okay. You're on the ground; you're safe. You made it down; it's okay."

"I can't--" Tilly gasps. "Chris, I, that was--how am I not dead, Chris?"

"It's okay, Red," Chris is saying as he's unclipping her safety harness and unzipping her out of her climbing rig. "It's okay; you lost a couple of pitons, but you did everything right, and you're down and safe." 

He strips the last bit of gear off her and pulls her into a hug. She clings to him, the shaking really kicking in as her brain catches up with everything that had happened in the last few--minutes? Seconds? It seems like hours, but really, she thinks it's probably only been maybe a minute from where the piton in the canyon wall had broken free and she'd started falling. She thinks the force of her fall pulled out four or five more before one had held, which at least meant she wasn't free-falling straight to the canyon floor but the momentum from the distance she had fallen had sent her slamming into the wall. She's not at all sure how she got to the ground, but here she is, so hey, go her.

"How did you--?" Tilly gasps into Chris' neck as her brain ricochets back to the present. "You were--" 

He'd been on a separate line, free climbing next to her, and the last she'd seen him he'd been a good fifteen meters higher than she'd been.

"I rappelled down as soon as I saw that first piton give way," Chris says, still holding her and rubbing her back. "Did a fast rope that'd make any of the deployment teams jealous."

Tilly shakes her head a little--she's still burrowed into him--and manages to say, "They already think you're awesome; you really don't need to up your street cred with those crazies."

"That's just a bonus extra to getting down here with you," Chris says, finally setting her back on her heels and looking her up and down. She's still a little shaky, but at least she doesn't fall over. "You hang here for a couple of minutes and I'll get our stuff pulled together."

"No," Tilly protests. "I know you were gunning for the peak; I can just stay here and--"

"No," Chris says. 

"But--"

"Red." Chris shakes his head, his hands on his hips. "That's not happening and I'm going to start asking for names here, so I can go and have words with whoever made you think it should."

"Start with my mom," Tilly mumbles, staring at the dusty, dry ground. When she finally looks up, Chris strokes the back of his fingers along her cheekbones, and Tilly has to blink back a couple of humiliating tears. "I'm okay," she says. 

"All right," Chris says, not making a big deal out of it. "Take it easy; this won't take long."

Tilly nods, focusing on her breathing while Chris packs up all the climbing gear he'd arrived with for this most recent side trip away from the on-going (and in Tilly's opinion, never-going-to-be-ending) negotiations. By the time he's done, she's not in danger of hyperventilating, which is at least a start. The adrenaline rush is fading, too, which helps with the how jumpy she is.

"C'mon, let's get you back so you can soak out those shakes in the hot springs." Chris holds out an arm to haul her to her feet, but when she grabs his hand, he can't quite hide a flinch. 

"Holy crap," Tilly says, turning his hand over and seeing a long, ugly groove across his palm where the rope had burned straight through his glove and into his skin. "Chris!"

"I told you I came down fast," he says, shrugging. "Here--" He holds out his other hand. "Take this one; it didn't get it quite so bad."

She'd protest more, but she recognizes the tension and energy still practically thrumming through him and knows he's not going to settle any time soon. There are times when she wonders if he's always been like this, or if the war or everything that had happened with _Discovery_ and the Red Angel hunt had amped things up. She's a little too off-balance to really think about it right now, though.

Getting to the shuttle sounds like a great idea, but Tilly's legs take their own sweet time in being ready to take her weight so the walk back to their shuttle takes a stupid amount of time. They finally make it, though, and she falls into the seat with a groan. 

"Belt in," Chris says, leaning over to drop a kiss on her hair as he fires up the engines and gets ready for lift off. "I don't want to lose you now, not after you made the recovery of the year back on the canyon wall."

"Belting in," Tilly confirms. "I'm equally invested in not getting lost. Also, you promised hot springs."

"I did," Chris says. "Private hot springs and whatever you want after."

"You say the most fabulous things," Tilly sighs. Adrenaline-fueled sex--which had definitely been on the agenda once they'd summitted, there's no use pretending otherwise--probably isn't happening, not with how wobbly she still feels, but even when he's hyped, Chris is not averse to cuddling, which sounds _amazing_ to Tilly right about now.

"I try, Red," he says, and lets her loop her pinkie through his all through the flight to the small posting house they'd been planning to use as a base camp, where there is indeed a private hot spring and some excellent cuddling waiting for her.

"We should go back so you can get regen for your hands," Tilly murmurs from where Chris has got her wrapped up in his arms and the water is gently bubbling from the mineral rich vents deep beneath the ledge they're sitting on. She sounds a little dreamy, but what's not to be dreamy about in the here-and-now? Sure, she still doesn't know what she's doing with her life and she's getting distressingly familiar with how to talk herself out of a panic attack, but the immediate surroundings are _excellent_. She can compartmentalize like a champ.

"It's fine," Chris says. "I'll catch up back on _Enterprise_. It'll give Phil a chance to grump at me."

"Yeah, but they have to hurt," Tilly says, the dreaminess giving way to a minor distraction as she's maybe rethinking the sex part of the evening; he's right there and so is she and nobody's wearing much of anything and between the hot water and Chris' arms around her, she's feeling very, very okay and mellow. She barely has to move to get her mouth on his throat, right exactly where he likes it.

"Proof of life, Red," Chris sighs out, tipping his head back so she can have a little more room to work. "Proof of life."

That starts a quiet chord of _wrongwrongwrong_ through her brain and she's gathering herself to push back a little on it, but then his hand's sliding under the little scrap of material she's wearing, and he knows exactly where to touch her, too, his fingers dancing along the side and top of her breast until he can start playing with her nipple, not quite gentle little pinches and quick, sharp scrapes with his nails, and everything else flies out of her head.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Captain," Una calls. She's using her calmest First Officer's voice, which is, to Chris' ear, very different from a greeting in Number One's voice, and one that Chris is not in the mood to deal with today. If he's being honest, he hasn't been in the mood to deal with it for years now. He can date the expiration of his patience fairly precisely, to the months right after Talos IV, but he knows she already knows that and is ignoring it. 

"Yes, Commander?" It's a petty little thing, using her rank instead of the nickname given out of love and respect, but he's apparently in a petty little mood. It's not anything to be proud of, but it's where he is these days.

"Dr. Boyce and I would like to speak with you about your planned EVA."

"Nothing to talk about," Chris says, as short as he ever has been with her. "There are a couple of microfractures in the hull and EVA is the best for the location."

"I agree," Una says, still in that damned let's-keep-everyone-calm voice. "My concern is more why the captain of the ship is putting on a suit and going out to fix it like a hull jockey."

She's definitely annoyed; she'd never use that kind of slang otherwise. Chris should feel at least a small amount of remorse for that, but today is just not that day.

"I like to keep up with all my personnel, you know that."

"I've heard some weak excuses in my day, but that's not even rising to the level of a cadet getting called out by the OOD."

"I don't actually think this is your call to make," Chris snaps. "And before you start quoting regs at me about how the CMO has authority over the captain in cases of medical need, just--don't." He turns around and meets her eyes squarely. "A captain going out to fix the hull is a little unorthodox; I'll grant you that, but it's not anything near enough to start that whole the-captain-is-mentally-incapacitated-and-needs-to-be-relieved process."

"Your proposed _stunt_ is unnecessary and dangerous." Una bites off each word precisely and her tone is icy and not a little bit dangerous itself. "You have a duty to your ship and crew. Sir."

"I'll let you in on a little secret," Chris says, rubbing a hand over his face. "It'll be fine."

"You can't know--"

"Oh, I can," Chris interjects, smiling with the least amount of joy he's felt in a long, long while. "Monks and mystics, remember?"

"Captain," she starts, but Chris is pretty much done with the conversation.

"And even if they're wrong," he says, "my ship and crew will be in the best of hands, Number One. The best of hands."

He turns and leaves her at that. She's not wrong that it's a boneheaded move, but the thought of being outside the ship--his ship--with just himself and a few handholds to rely on is not something he's going to pass up. Not since Boreth.

❦ ❦ ❦

"What the hell was that?" Tilly demands almost before Chris even gets the door open. She's been pacing and biting her nails down to the quick ever since she got back from the air show, the one that's part of the run-up to the planetwide celebrations that commemorate Xahea--and her peoples--birth. It had been a really big deal that Chris had been invited to participate and Tilly had been half-vibrating out of her skin even before the ultra-lights everyone was flying had appeared. 

"What was what?" Chris snaps back, the cocky grin fading off his face. A couple of months ago, Tilly would have been horrified that she'd caused that to happen, but now she's looking with her actual brain and she can see how it's less of a smile and more of an adrenaline mask pretending to be happiness.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Tilly says. "But I'll spell it out so everybody's super clear." She's so mad (and scared) she's shaking. She should probably table this until she can think a little more calmly, but her brain is already plowing ahead. "What. The. Hell. were you thinking, to push that ship into a power stall, not two clicks from the town square?"

"It was fine," Chris answers through what sounds like gritted teeth. "We pulled out, no problem."

"No _problem_?" Tilly hisses. "A fraction of a second longer and you would have cartwheeled right over that square and everybody in it."

"The last time I checked, your qualifications didn’t include a pilot's licence, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t take your assessment of the situation with much weight."

Tilly can feel her jaw drop at that, but then the anger boiling along inside her doubles down and she narrows her eyes.

"I don’t need professional qualifications to know reckless behavior when I see it, especially when it’s that blatant, but if you want, I'll do the math to give you the exact margin you were playing with." Tilly fights to keep herself calm. "You and I both know you would have grounded any of your pilots for pulling a stunt like that. Hell, you would have reamed out an admiral for it."

"Well, you and I both know nothing was going to happen. Not now."

Chris drops that in and stands looking at her, his gaze uncompromising and bleak, and there’s no doubt in Tilly's mind what he means.

" _That's_ what this is about?" Tilly says, feeling sick. "You know where and how it ends so you can push everything else to the breaking point? Is that it?" 

So many things are falling into place--the free climbs on all the canyon walls and the base-jumping and the high-altitude parachute jumps and the concerns Number One has shared--and she's so terrified now she can barely breathe. 

"Is it, Chris? Because—"

"We are not having this conversation," Chris says, calm and cool and in control, right before he walks out of the bedroom.

Tilly reels back as though she's been slapped and feels her way to the chair at her desk. In all the time she's known him, he's never, not even when she'd been an overeager ensign with a palpable, hopeless crush, dismissed her so thoughtlessly. She thinks about his quiet _Proof of life, Red_ right before he'd laid her out on the rock shelf and fucked her until she barely remembered her name and all the other times he's skipped right along the surface and she's gone right along with him. She honestly doesn't know whether to follow him out and scream at him that she isn't a toy or just stay where she is and scream at herself for letting herself be just that. 

She wants to tell herself that she doesn't know what to do, but that's a lie. She knows; she just doesn't want to do it. She's all alone, though, and she's not letting herself off the hook until she works it all out in her head.

❦ ❦ ❦

Chris knows he's fucked up almost before the bedroom door closes behind him, but he hadn't been kidding either: he can't have that conversation about the time crystal and his future. And he sure as hell can't have it with Tilly, the most ragingly alive person he knows. 

He prowls the small living area of her apartment, pacing restlessly but unwilling to leave completely. He'll let her sleep, he decides, and in the morning, he'll apologize and make love to her and do his best to smooth over the mess he's made.

He spends the night persuading himself that will be enough, but, really, it's such a pathetic excuse for a plan that he can't be surprised when it all falls apart the second he opens the bedroom door and finds her awake, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen, as if she's been crying quietly all night.

"Tilly," Chris starts, but she holds up her hand and the words die in his throat.

"I can't," Tilly says with a disbelieving sort of a laugh. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I can't do this. Us." Her eyes are full but the tears somehow don't spill over. "I'm here, and every single person who knows me, except for you and Number One and Spock and Po, every other person in the universe thinks I'm dead. My mother, my family, my class at the Academy, all of them." 

She doesn't point out that it's on him that she's in this position, but Chris can fill that part in himself. 

"I'm super-grateful to have a place I can be, but it's not Starfleet, it's not what I've wanted to do all my life, it's not who I _was_ a year ago, and I'm barely managing to deal with that. I can't--I can't deal with you and how you're not dealing with that future the crystal says is coming for you, too." 

Chris stiffens and starts to argue, starts to tell her that it's not that big of a deal, starts to tell her all the things he tells himself all the time, but she's not done with him yet.

"I love you, I swear I do--god, I've loved you before I even understood what that _means_ \--but I can't, can't play the--the game you're playing with it, pretending like it's not a thing, that everything is super-cool until it's not and you shut down." 

The tears spill over then, one after the other streaking down her face. She doesn't wipe them away or even acknowledge them, just stands there and looks at Chris. 

"You're the bravest person I know and the most honorable and, and the most _stubborn_ , and I can't imagine how hard it must be to try to deal with that, but you're _not_ dealing and I can't play that game with you. It'll drag me down and I'll drag you down and we'll lose everything."

Chris stands in the doorway, but there's nothing he can say. It had probably been stupid and naive to have even tried for this, the two of them, but they had and now Chris needs to get his ass out before he does any more damage, even if that's only to tell her that he'd known this couldn't work and he'd tried to tell her months ago. 

That's a level of petty that Chris is ashamed of even entertaining, so he makes himself pick up the bag he'd dropped as he'd come in the door and picked her up so he could fuck her against the wall. It's not even been two days since, but he's known all his life that things can change in an instant. He doesn't see why he and Tilly should be any different, no matter how much he might have wanted it to be.

"Tilly," he says, because he can't just leave. "You will figure your life out. You _will_. You were an exemplary officer and I have full faith that you'll take that with you into something new."

"Swear to me you'll take care of yourself," she says from where she's still standing across the room from him. "Please."

"I will--try," Chris answers, and she lets him go even though he's certain she knows it for the lie it mostly is.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Til?" Po calls softly, and Tilly rouses herself from where she's been sitting since Chris left--since she sent Chris away. It's dark outside of the windows and the lights in her rooms are only on in the dim, shaded level that's automatic once the motion detectors send out their all-clear signal. She doesn't know how long it's been, but then, what does it really matter? 

"I'm here," she answers Po. "I'm--not very okay, but I guess I'm not not-okay either."

"I saw Chris on his way back up to the ship," Po says. "I'm so sorry."

"I just--couldn't," Tilly whispers. _And he didn’t even try to address it_ , a little voice in her head says, which is just not what she needs to hear right now. 

"It's not a crime," Po says. "Knowing when you've hit your limits is important. You have to take care of yourself."

"Then why does it hurt so much?" Tilly hasn't cried since before Chris left; she thinks it might help, but it's not happening.

"Because it's something you wanted a lot," Po answers.

"I did," Tilly sighs. "I wanted him--us--so much and I just couldn't figure out how to make it work."

Po comes and sits next to Tilly and lets her lean on her. "I know you tried."

"I have to get my shit together," Tilly says. "I have to figure out this life I have now, because this is pathetic."

"You will," Po tells her. "This year, it's been… a lot, I know, but you'll find a path." The arm she has looped around Tilly's shoulders tightens. "And whatever I can do, you tell me."

"You're the queen, Po," Tilly says. "You have better things to do than kick my butt out of the mopes."

"'Better' is such a subjective definition," Po says. "And you know how I feel about non-objective criteria." Tilly half-laughs. "There's always stuff going on, but if I can't care about my first real friend, how is that good for the queen stuff I'm supposed to be taking care of? Besides, you listen to me bitch about all the so-called 'important' stuff, so you're helping to save the queen's sanity. There's probably a medal around somewhere for that."

"Okay," Tilly says, with a little--but still real, and it feels important to note that--laugh. "I'll yell when I figure something out you can help with. Operation: Who Am I Without Starfleet… it's a go."

"Good," Po says, her hand gentle as she strokes it through Tilly's hair. "Maybe just take a little bit to breathe, though, okay? You're allowed to be sad about all this."

"I don't think that's going to be a problem," Tilly says, but she still doesn't cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear there's a happy ending. Swear.
> 
> Also, what Tilly knows about Chris' future is more-or-less what his record shows from TOS, after he agrees to return to Talos. They sort of hush it up because Talos is still Restricted. I have no idea how that plays out with who knows what about the events from Discovery, but it fits with what my brain is spinning out, so I'm not poking at it too hard. Also, she's looking from nearly a thousand years in the future. Who knows what kind of records survived?


	4. 2259

"Shields up, red alert," Chris barks, and the energy on the bridge leaps higher with every word. "Ops, warm up the phasers; stand by with proton torpedos. Nicola, hail everyone on all standard frequencies as soon as we're out of warp; let's get these cowboys to stand down before they start a war." Chris makes sure his body language says _bored, annoyed, condescending_ for the screens. This particular group of planets has already blown through all the good will and positive negotiating tactics the Federation is prepared to give them; _Enterprise_ is here to provide the stick part of the carrot-and-stick equation. "Helm, give me the countdown."

"Aye, Captain. Dropping out of warp in three, two--" 

The forward screen resolves into the standard starfield view, and Chris takes a deep breath. There's nothing quite like dropping out of warp to a standoff between two rival systems to get the adrenaline pumping, even if the _Enterprise_ could out-gun both sides put together.

"Number One, put us right between both fleets; Comms, how are we doing on contact?"

"Aye, Captain," Una calls, right as Nicola sends Chris a satisfied grin and says, "I've got both captains waiting on you, Captain."

"On screen, Lieutenant," Chris answers with a smile of his own--it never hurts to keep them waiting, just to establish the pecking order--and turns to face the combatants. "This is Captain Christopher Pike of the USS _Enterprise_ , sent by the Federation to facilitate a peaceful end to this situation."

"Is that why your weapons systems are armed and ready, Captain?"

"No, my weapons are online because by all accounts, both sides here like to shoot first and ask questions later and I don't put my people at risk around trigger-happy factions looking to make their bones at the expense of anything that catches their eye."

Chris smiles his sharpest grin at the forward screen and lets the silence draw out until both rival captains drop their eyes. "Now," Chris says, "we're prepared to offer the _Enterprise_ as a neutral zone, where both your leaders can meet to work through the differences that have brought you to this point. Please convey our invitation through the appropriate channels; we'll be happy to wait--a bit--for your answers. Pike, out."

Nicola cuts the feed and Chris says, "Number One, you're up to handle the inevitable excuses as to why this proposed meeting can't take place."

"Oh, lovely," she answers in her perfect, brutal deadpan, understanding his plan immediately, even with how they've barely been speaking to each other off-duty for months. "It's been forever since we've gotten to play bad cop, worse cop."

"With the added bonus of neither culture having gotten past their misogynistic histories," Chris tells her. She smiles a positively evil smile, and he can feel his own mirroring it. " _And_ ," he adds, "they're both extraordinarily tied up with rank and jockeying for power and prestige, so being handed off to my subordinate…"

"Especially when they don't have a choice," she… well, Chris is going to have to say that she's purring. "I do love delivering a good wake-up call." 

"I know you do. Consider it a belated birthday present." Chris grins at her unreservedly and not even the hard realization that it's been far too long since that had happened can tear down the satisfaction of having that connection click into place again. Add to that the rider from the relief of finding out it hadn't disappeared for good and Chris is feeling more like himself than he has in almost a year. 

_You're an idiot, Pike_ , Chris says to himself. _But sometimes you get it done_.

"All right," he says out loud, glancing around the bridge. "Carry on; let's let both sides stew for awhile." He lets another smile curve his mouth at the thought of the scrambling that is undoubtedly happening across both ships and their command structures. "Number One, you have the conn."

"Aye, Captain," everyone choruses in reply, the rest of the crew as seemingly entertained by his plan as he and Una are. 

It suddenly seems a waste to not take this sudden breakthrough to a logical--and helpful--conclusion, so Chris directs the lift to Medbay. Phil has been right there with Chris all along, pressing when he thinks he can, easing off when he can't, but never backing away. Chris has lost count of the evenings Phil's spent in the ready room with him, most of the time not even talking, but always there. Over time, like water carving out a canyon, he's gotten Chris to deal with the petty shit that's been eating away at him-- _Come on, Pike_ , he'd growled on one occasion, _You know I live for the little crap. I'll take it in a heartbeat over having to patch you or the crew back together_ \--and, Chris realizes, that's not an insignificant part of Chris getting to here, today, where he can almost see a path forward. At the very least, he knows that if he turns to Phil to see if he can see it more clearly, Phil will do whatever he can to shove Chris in the right direction.

Chris gets a couple of curious looks along the way--he's usually not anywhere but the bridge during a Red Alert--but he's been roaming the ship at all hours for longer than he'd like to admit, so it's probably far fewer than might have happened before--everything. 

Everything: Talos, Vina, Boreth, _Discovery_ , Xahea. Tilly. All his impossible things of the last few years. 

Paying strict attention to his ship had at least worn him down enough to sleep and then had given him something constructive to do when the inevitable dreams yank him awake. He knows he's invented a lot of busy work, but it's kept him going, and if nothing else, has gotten him extensive face time with his junior officers, more than even he would normally put on the books. If this next segment goes how he's expecting it to go, he'll at least have confidence in his crew to keep things moving even if he's not right there.

All that notwithstanding, he manages to duck out of the passageway before causing a panic, and, as luck would have it, finds Phil in his office, dictating notes. 

"I don't want to take up too much of your time," Chris says, nodding to the video carousel of files he can see Phil's working on, "but, uh, if you can find me someone who can deal with all the non-standard issues we seem to accumulate, I'm willing to try talking working with them." 

It feels as though it should have been harder to say that, but then Chris assumes that's where all the denial and pretense over the last months comes into play.

"Kat worked with a fair number of the psych rotations," Phil answers, not blinking or missing a beat. "It's not a bad place to start from, and then we can winnow down the rest."

"There are things I'm not going to be able to talk about," Chris warns. Well, _one_ thing, and the big thing, but dealing with everything else, like Phil's been after him to do for months now, hasn't made things worse, even on the small scale that he's been attempting. He's gotten to a point where he can at least try more.

"I'll be sure whoever I get understands that," Phil says. "Though you know I'm not in favor of it."

"I do know," Chris answers. 

"All right, go deal with whatever that Red Alert's for, and get out of my hair." Phil turns his attention back to his system, but then calls out before Chris can get too far away. "If we're not in a full attack situation, I'll stop by at the end of Beta shift tonight."

"Who are you trying to kid?" Chris answers, somewhere between amusement and horror that he's actually gone and committed to talking to the Psych team. "You'll hunt me down even if we've been boarded, so you can make damn sure I don't find a way to weasel out of this."

"That's entirely possible, too," Phil says agreeably. He doesn't turn around, but Chris knows he's smiling that _Gotcha_ smile he saves for when he's very pleased with how events are turning out. It's strangely comforting.

"Thanks, Phil," Chris says. "I owe you one."

"No, you don't," Phil says. "I'm just damn glad you got to the place where I can do something for you."

Chris hesitates, because he's still not sure this is going to do any good, but he is going to try, so he nods. "Still," he starts, but Phil waves him off.

"Go be captain, Captain. I've got this."

Chris takes a deep breath and goes to see how much fun Una is having with their targets. All in all, it's not been all that bad of a day, and he definitely intends to enjoy it as much as he can.

❦ ❦ ❦

"You know," Tilly hisses at Po as they 'somehow' have ended up at the university and (even more coincidentally) in the suite of labs and lecture halls that belong to Lei Lani, Po's extraordinary healer, "You are so lucky I haul this thing--" she waggles the small universal translator that always lives in her messenger bag "--with me all the time or you'd have totally lost your excuse for being here."

Tilly's spoken Xahean has gotten to where it's decent--enough that she can make herself understood in most circumstances in the city--but as a human, she really isn't built to speak it--wrong jaw and throat and palate structure. She keeps at it, because it makes her feel more connected to this place that's now her home, but she's not exactly conversational in it, especially for long periods of time, so she carries the portable translator with her a lot. Mostly, she ends up using it around the palace grounds (because that's 'home' and she needs to chill when she's there), so it's yet one more thing she hauls around in her messenger bag, but she carries it all the time, because you never know, right? 

Being able to follow very technical conversations as a cover for your best friend visiting her crush definitely falls under the you-never-know category, Tilly thinks.

Po elbows at Tilly under cover of the loose-fitting tunic she's wearing, but she's trying to act like she's totally chill and just bringing her friend by to see Lani's labs, so it's a weak try, and then Lani herself is coming out to see them and Po more-or-less forgets about Tilly. It's kind of sweet, Tilly thinks, as Po stumbles and forgets words and generally loses all her composure even trying to say hello. 

Tilly catches a glimpse of Kun, Po's bodyguard, out of the corner of her eye, and he's barely managing to keep a straight face, so it's not only Tilly who's noticed things. The Council is still having heart palpitations about Po being the last of the direct line, but every single Xahean they’ve thrown at her is absolutely so wrong. Tilly has no idea how they haven't figured out that their queen basically turns into a stuttering, stammering mess when a certain healer is in the same room, but here they all are, and no one official seems the wiser.

"She wanted me to see where you worked," Tilly says, taking pity on Po and at least offering a reasonable excuse for them being there. "My brain hasn't had a freak-out for a couple of months about the, uh, place that we're not naming yet, so I think she's hoping I can come talk with you for real at some point."

One of the things Tilly's proudest of having done, even more than keeping at the Xahean, is getting through a written description of her time in the mycelial network. She'd treated it like a report for Commander Stamets and given herself permission to walk away when it got too weird in her head. 

Which it had. 

A lot.

She'd kept going though, and finished, _finally_. 

Her brain had rewarded her by skipping the full-color dreams where she gets separated from May and eaten alive by the rest of the fungi and giving her a replay of the scene in MedBay when Chris had come to check in on her, except he wasn't the captain he'd been to her then, but the Chris she'd known on Xahea. That would have been awesome, except he wouldn't acknowledge her as anything other than Ensign. And in the end, when he'd walked away, he'd left with a quick, disinterested flick of his eyes. She'd woken up with tears on her face, missing him so badly she couldn't breathe at first.

Still. 

She'd _done_ it and that counted for a lot. 

Lei Lani is super-gracious about meeting Tilly, even if Tilly still can't talk about the thing she most wants to learn about. 

"You must not force yourself to be here," she says to Tilly, holding Tilly's hand in both of her own, like how Tilly's grandmother had greeted her and her friends, for all that Lei Lani isn't all that much older than Tilly herself. "I would not have you bring yourself to grief, even if it is to help me."

"No, no, this is fine," Tilly assures her, forcing herself not to make any kind of eye contact with Po, who she knows is freaking out at maybe having to leave. "I only get to see P--Her Highness' workshops and labs, and I'm an engineer, so being here is very exciting."

Lei Lani immediately offers to show them around. Tilly would have accepted even without the big, pleading eyes Po lays on her as soon as Lei Lani's turned to tidy up her desk, which she would have thought Po would know, but she guesses Po's deep in that panicked state of being around the person you're hopelessly crushing on and can't really think straight.

Tilly absolutely can relate, so she accepts with many layers of pleasure and lets Lei Lani shepherd them out of the office area. 

"Of course, Her Serene Highness has seen much of this," Lei Lani is saying as they step into a lab. "Please, feel free to stay in my office if you don't want to--"

"No way!" Po exclaims. "I'm dying to see how things have come along since the last time I was here."

She's a little loud, but at the very least she's stopped trying to be royally gracious and is letting herself show her genuine interest in Lei Lani's work. Tilly is pretty sure everyone is writing it off as Po's usual interest in science and engineering, but she can tell there's more to it than that (which of course there is, all Po's disclaimers of how anything between Po and Lani could never work aside.)

It's actually a pretty fascinating tour; Tilly and Po take turns firing off questions and Lani (they've gotten down to informal names, at least between Tilly and Lani, and they're at least down to 'ma'am' for Po) catches on quickly that they're not there out of politeness. Her answers get more and more detailed, and when Kun clears his throat apologetically and says that they need to get started back to the palace for Po's next engagement, all three of them sigh with regret.

"Perhaps we could visit again," Po says, suuuuuuuper nonchalantly, but Lani doesn't seem to notice anything's odd, and agrees with a smile that Po returns. It goes on so long, the two of them smiling at each other, that Tilly kinda feels like she should start backing out, slowly, so as not to distract them, but then Kun clears his throat again, and the spell's broken.

The trip back to the palace is quiet, but it's a thoughtful kind of quiet rather than anything stressed and angry. Po finally breaks it to say, "What did you think? About maybe being able to work with Lani?"

"I think," Tilly says slowly, "that I definitely want to be able to help her and she's so, I don't know, welcoming…?" Po nods like she gets it. "I think I could go and talk to her and she wouldn't make things worse if I had a panic attack in the middle of it all." Tilly thinks for another second and then adds, "Which makes me feel much less likely to have one to start."

"Yeah," Po says, reaching across the seat to take Tilly's hand. "She was the first person I met with who was okay talking about… everyone, my parents and all, when I first, you know, became officially official." 

"I can see that," Tilly says. "I mean, I really can see where actual conversation about, y'know, _there_ , could happen with her. Without me having to breathe into a paper bag, even."

"Baby steps," Po says. Tilly laughs, because it had taken forever to train the translator to get that expression right both ways, but she and Po say it to each other so much it had totally been worth the effort.

Tilly considers bringing up Lei Lani in a more personal context, but she and Po have a wordless pact going on. Neither one of them is enabling the other to keep their distance from the relationships that are dancing around their brains. Po doesn't talk to Tilly about Chris when she sees him during negotiations, so Tilly does the same with Lani. 

"If you want to know how he is, I am totally willing and able to tell him you want to see him and that I'll set aside someplace private for you to meet. If he wants that, too, I'm all over making it happen," Po's told Tilly sternly. "But I'm not carrying messages and making it easy for you to pretend all this distance is fine."

"You'd tell me if he looked bad, though, right?" Tilly had asked, suddenly worried. "Right?"

"Yes," Po had sighed. "And for the record, when I gave him this same speech, he asked the exact same question."

"Oh," Tilly had answered, because what else was she supposed to say? She still cared about him and it'd been nice to know he hadn't completely forgotten about her, but caring hadn't ever been the issue, so it wasn't like anything had changed.

"Yeah," Po had sighed, and they'd gone back to figuring out the rest of their lives.

Back in the present, Tilly looks out the window at the streets rushing past them and thinks that maybe they _should_ talk about these kinds of things, but then Kun is turning smoothly into the palace gates and it's time to get out and let the real world rush back in.

❦ ❦ ❦

The floating poker game that Una has been running on the _Enterprise_ for years is both the worst- and the best-kept secret in the Fleet, because of course it is.

She's Number One; she likes her contradictions. 

It's the worst-kept secret because everyone knows about it, in that legendary, I-heard-they-once-had-pot-with-an-entire-case-of-blood-wine-the-real-stuff-not-from-a-replicator way, which is, Chris is still bemused to note, true. And it's the best-kept secret, because no one gets near it without a personal approval from the woman herself. She says it's so she doesn't have to risk carrying bad karma over baby-faced cadets losing their bank accounts, but Chris knows better, mostly because her supremely logical brain doesn't care a damn bit about karma. She makes sure it's the best-kept secret in the Fleet because she doesn't have any time to waste on wannabe players in her quest for total domination. 

Plus, she likes being in control.

In all the mess that's been going on, Talos and the war and _Discovery_ and all, Chris hasn't missed a round. He thinks that's fairly significant given that he and Una have been on very chilly, if still polite, speaking terms off the bridge, but until he gets to the final hand of the current round and it's just the two of them still alive, he realizes he's been in and gone quickly for the last few months. 

Tonight, though, the luck has been running his way, and for once, he's been inclined to run with it, pushing every hand right to the very edge. Una, of course, doesn't have any use for the concept of luck, so her hands are the product of very careful--and shrewd--attention being paid to the cards themselves. If it was only that, though, Chris knows she'd have cashed out much earlier. She might not believe in having a lucky run, but she knows he does and he assumes she knows how he plays when he's having one. 

Logic only goes so far at the poker table. Spock has yet to be able to bring himself to bluff well--if he doesn't fold, everyone knows he's got a good hand and folds themselves. Una tends to run the table that way, too, but Chris knows she knows how to bluff with the best of them.

Whenever it's down to the two of them left, the credit on the table barely matters. Both of them throw all of their winnings into the unofficial crew entertainment fund, but it's the principle of the matter. Neither one of them likes to lose, and everyone in the room knows that. Chris is fairly certain there's a shipwide message being posted with every card and ante, so that the rest of the crew can follow along. 

Chris is holding crap on the final hand--a pair of twos isn't going to be enough to do much of anything--but he smiles at Una and raises her bid without a blink. She grins back, evidently delighted by his refusal to fold. Chris considers the possibility that she's been paying attention closely enough to know how bad his hand is (which is not only possible, but probable), but then, he's been paying attention enough to know she probably doesn't have anything much better. 

"You _are_ feeling lucky tonight," she says as she meets his raise and motions for the next cards to be dealt.

"You usually like it when I'm feeling lucky," Chris counters as he gets another trash card. "Even if you're holding nothing, you can at least tell yourself I'm being irrational."

"It is the job of the first officer to be there when the captain isn't," she answers, taking her own card without the smallest indication of how good it might be.

They grin at each other again, and then go back to their own internal calculations. Both of them bet right up to the limit, but when Chris finally calls and it's time to lay down their hands, his lowly pair of twos ends up beating her hand.

"King high, really?" Chris asks, laughing. Everyone else who bailed out of the last round are all but crawling under the table in embarrassment. "I knew you had to have a trash hand, but I still wasn't sure my trash was going to beat it."

"That last four was out there," she answered, almost primly. "That would have been enough."

"Ah, well," Chris said, counting up the chips and transferring the right amount to the anonymous account that holds the funds for shipwide parties and celebrations. Unbidden, the thought of how much Tilly would have enjoyed organizing a crew-wide party with an actual budget slips into his mind and he has to wrench his thoughts back to the here-and-now. "I don't suppose it matters all that much."

"Says the last one standing," Una points out. 

"I'm sure you'd say the same thing if you were here," Chris says, unable to keep from needling her a bit. 

"And you'd be grumpy if you were here, too," she shoots back. 

"I can see where I've been bailing out too early at these things," Chris says. "Letting you get a bit too comfortable in the winner's circle."

"You have," Una says, seriously. "Losing aside, I'm happy to have you back around."

"I'm happy to be here," Chris answers, equally as serious. "All winning aside."

It's late enough into Gamma shift that the passageways are nearly deserted, but Una still pitches her voice very, very quietly. "I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen."

"Oh, I'd already thought that," Chris tells her. "Make a note of the date--you were the more optimistic of the two of us."

"That doesn't make me feel much better," she says, severe and unhappy.

"It's been a long, bad few years--" _Not all of it was bad_ , a part of his brain points out, and he has to firmly remind it that not-bad only counts when you don't fuck the good part up. "Coming right on top of the war, too."

"Yes."

"I should have told you this earlier, but Phil's set me up with someone who's used to dealing with this sort of thing." Despite himself, Chris laughs at the disbelieving look Una sends him. He's right there with her. "Well, not _our_ sort of thing--I don't think they actually believe half of the things I'm working through and I haven't even thrown out any of the odd stuff." He shrugs. "Turns out that dealing with the petty shit at least gives me some space to breathe through the big shit."

"Imagine that," Una says drily, but then shocks the hell out of Chris by stopping and putting her hand on his arm. "I'm glad. All sarcasm aside, I'm more glad than I can say. I know it can't be easy."

"It's not what you'd call enjoyable," Chris says, thinking of all the nights he's run the passageways after a long, difficult session. "But it's better than it was before."

"Then we'll do what we can to keep that trajectory."

In his own opinion, Chris really doesn't deserve the unquestioning support that's being offered to him, but he is profoundly grateful he's able to finally accept it. 

"It's--surprisingly practical," he says, thinking of the sleep tracking and schedule planning and journaling he's been doing. Establishing his toolkit, they call it; and it's a sad thing to admit, but it had been decades since Chris had actually thought about what made his life better. He's found himself thinking, more than once, that he really has no idea how he'd paid attention enough to have begun his relationship with Tilly, even if he hadn't been able to follow through and keep it flourishing. "Things you'd think I could take care of on my own, but…"

"You know that I'm very, very good at the practical and logical," she says.

"I do--and even at my worst, I had no doubt that my ship--my crew--would be in the best possible hands. Certainly better than I was doing on my own. 'Thank you' doesn't seem adequate, but it still deserves to be said."

It's not often that Chris can render Una speechless, but she only shakes her head and waves a hand at him to go on.

"And before you get too optimistic," Chris sighs, "I'm scheduled for a week on Xahea, possibly two, coming up here shortly, so let's go ahead and brace for some backsliding."

"I'm assuming that's due to the disappointing turn to the negotiations," Una says, "because I haven't heard you mention any other causes for potential mental wellness backsliding."

"Mostly." Chris keeps his eyes straight ahead. "It doesn't help that every place I look is a reminder of what I threw away, but mostly, yes, it's not being able to do a thing as the negotiations keep crumbling."

Una is quiet for a long stretch of passageway, but finally says, "You haven't spoken to Tilly?"

She ends with the tiniest inflection so that it's technically a question, but Chris knows his acknowledgement is going to be entirely _pro forma_.

"No." He's aware of how short he sounds, but there's not much he's been able to do about that yet. Una doesn't appear to be taking it personally, which is at least something. "She was very clear the last time we spoke, and… I can't argue with her reasoning."

Una doesn't answer until they're at the point where they'll need to separate to reach their individual quarters, and then she says, "You haven't asked for this, and I'm not the person who would ordinarily offer it, but I do have one observation if you'd like to hear it." 

She pauses, clearly waiting for Chris to decide. It takes him much longer than he'd like to admit to come to the conclusion that he's ready to hear whatever it is that she's noticed, but finally, he manages to nod once. 

Una nods back, and then, very evenly says, "Perhaps, now that you aren't pretending that there is nothing that can be done about the events of the last few years, you might allow yourself to acknowledge that perfection is unattainable and that no one but you, yourself, expects it."

"Meaning?" Chris somehow keeps his own voice even, but there are very, very few people in the universe that he'll listen to about topics such as this.

"Everyone has regrets, Chris. You don't have to cut that part out wholesale, much less keep telling yourself that doing it is for the best or is all you deserve. Broken doesn't mean irreparable."

"Sometimes, it does." Chris has circled around the possibility of stitching at least the outlines of a relationship back together, but every time, he comes back to how quickly he'd lashed out when Tilly had called him on his shit, and he doesn't know how he can trust that he won't do that again. He still thinks about her a dozen times a day, but aside from giving in and keeping a list of things that he knows she'd be fascinated by--a part of his toolkit he hasn't shared with anyone, but that gives him great satisfaction to compile--he hasn't let it build from there. 

"Sometimes, it's easier to think it does," Una counters. "And that's my one thing." She turns to go, but then looks back over her shoulder and smiles at him. "Bring a healthy credit balance next week; I do not intend to lose twice in a row, Captain."

"Number One," Chris answers. "Intentions are not actions; you of all people know that well."

❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly has gotten so used to the winding paths through the palace grounds that she barely pays attention to them when she's out running. The groundskeepers and all are finally used to her strange human ways (no self-respecting Xahean would be out running around for no real reason--they save that kind of energy for games or dances or things that Tilly admits are much more sociable and fun) and have stopped asking her if there's anything wrong, so she settles into a zone and lets her body take over.

Of course, this also means that she's not exactly prepared for random people getting in her way, so when one does, all of a sudden, she (of course) runs smack into them and ends up staggering off the path and nearly falling into one of the ornamental ponds before she manages to catch her balance. 

"Ensign Tilly?" 

She's not sure if it's better or worse that she recognizes who she's run over, but there's not much to do but pull herself together and get back up on the path.

"Hi, Spock," Tilly answers, trying--and failing--not to sound like she's about to have a coronary event from how out of breath she is. (It is completely unfair how she's wheezing and gasping even though she's been very diligent about her aerobic conditioning.) "How's life treating you?"

He opens his mouth to tell her there is no such entity as 'life' (Tilly knows this as sure as she knows her own name), but then somehow manages not to point out the obvious and answers, "I believe the answer to be somewhere along the continuum of 'somewhat to rather well.'"

"Good to hear," Tilly answers with as big of a smile as she can dredge up. Small talk is almost physically painful for Vulcans, much less Vulcans who're having to make said small talk with the person their captain was carrying on with (much _less_ when said person is the former roommate of said Vulcan's somewhat estranged sister who had jumped a thousand years into the future before the reconciliation could actually solidify.) 

_Starfleet. So complicated_ , Tilly thinks.

"And you?" Spock asks. "You are… being treated well by life?"

"I am doing pretty okay," Tilly says. She thinks about it for a second, and then, adds, "Yeah, really. Life is pretty okay."

"And that is a good thing," Spock says, an edge of doubt to his voice.

"Yeah, no, it is," Tilly assures him. "It's--solid, like, I'm finding my way."

"I am happy to hear that."

"Thank you." Tilly hesitates for a second, but then decides she's not nothing much to lose. "I'm actually glad I ran into you--I mean, not that we crashed, but that you're here." Spock's giving her that oh-so-polite, Vulcan side-eye that means he thinks she's becoming irrational, so she hurries on, saying, "And not, not because of Chr--the captain, but--I've been thinking a lot about Michael, about her going to Vulcan when she was so young, and how it must have been, learning a new culture--and not only Michael, but your mom, too, how amazing her work is, how she bridged the two cultures and the incredible job it was to make Vulcan accessible to humans, I mean, it's, I'm just finding it incredibly coincidental that I have those two as examples and, really, inspirations for this whole situation I'm in, and--" She runs out of breath and has to stop, right about the same time she realizes how batshit she sounds. 

"My mother and sister are both exceptional, I agree," Spock says. "It is indeed fortunate that you have been able to draw upon their experiences, but I would also point out that my sister, especially, has never suffered fools gladly. That you befriended her and offered her support through her difficulties speaks highly of you, as a person of integrity and empathy."

"Spock!" Tilly says, feeling her face heat with has to be a monumental blush. "That's--I'm--" She takes a deep breath and manages a simple, but no less heartfelt, "Thank you. Michael is an amazing friend. She took me seriously, you know? Almost right from the start." She grins at Spock. "It took her a little while to realize that I really am like I am, but then… I don't know if we would have made it through everything without her."

"She is very focused," Spock says. Tilly snorts, because yeah, that's one way to put it, but Spock clearly has more to say, so she leaves it at that. "I find it also fortunate to have met with you, especially given your thoughts of my sister and mother." 

_Oh_ , Tilly thinks. _Family stuff. Even more complicated than Starfleet._

She waits patiently--emotions, Vulcans, etc, etc--and Spock finally says, "I do not know if this is possible, given the circumstances surrounding your arrival here, but if it were to be, would you be amenable to meeting with my parents? I believe my mother, especially, would welcome the chance to know one of Michael's friends."

"I would love to meet your mother," Tilly says, feeling one of her super-big smiles squinching up her face. She's been reliably informed from about fifth grade on that it makes her look like a chipmunk, but Spock doesn't seem to notice. "Your father, too, if that's something that might happen," she hurries to add. 

"It is possible," Spock says, but Tilly can hear the doubt. Again: families, such a complicated subject.

"So, this was totally my favorite collision of the week," Tilly says, poking a little at that stiff Vulcan exterior as they walk back toward the courtyard. Spock slants a very Michael side-eye at her and she can't help laughing.

"You run into people often enough to be able to assign rankings to the collisions?" he says in this beautifully dubious voice that tells her that he knows exactly how ridiculous she's being (and why, too, which is totally excellent. Sometimes, she misses being able to be silly with anyone other than Po.)

"Spock, Spock, Spock," she mock-sighs. "I know we weren't on the same ship for very long, but surely your powers of observation weren't that lacking."

"It was a difficult time," Spock says with an equal amount of mock-gravity. "Also, I am informed by Number One that it is better to err on the side of politely averting my eyes in matters such as ensign-crewmember collisions."

"Probably not a bad rule to follow; Number One is almost always right in these kinds of situations," Tilly agrees. "But you're my best friend's little brother. You're, like, contractually obligated to give me a hard time."

"Indeed," Spock answers, with an almost-smile that sends Tilly off into another fit of the giggles, which is, of course, exactly when she catches sight of Chris standing outside in the courtyard, tall and gorgeous in his uniform and clearly waiting for Spock, and the laugh suddenly half-chokes her. 

"I'm--just, gonna go, go the back way up to my apartment," Tilly stutters. Chris is turned around and hasn't seen them yet, so if she can manage to get turned around and headed the other direction, she can pretend she hasn't seen him and he won't have seen her and she won't have to deal with trying to act like it's no big deal to run into him. Because, according to how hard her heart is thumping--worse than when she'd stopped running--and how hard it is to catch her breath, a very large part of her still thinks it's a ginormous deal, seeing him right there. "Bye," she gasps back over her shoulder, and beyond Spock she can see Chris starting to turn around. "I'd love to meet your mother, for real."

She's not quite fast enough; Chris is all the way turned around before she can get safely away, but he doesn't call out to her and Spock doesn't call her back either. The only thing she can say is that she doesn't _literally_ run away--she somehow manages to keep it at a very very fast walk--but it's otherwise a humiliating retreat.

❦ ❦ ❦

Chris isn't sure how they're not shutting down these treaty talks and calling it for the disaster it is, but once again, neither side is budging and they've reached the point where they've said every talking point at least three times and the motion is to table the discussions and reassemble in six weeks. He supposes no one wants to own the title of giving up on the potential of the incubator technology, though he knows it's only a matter of time before the rumors mining consortium has started seeding--that the technology doesn't work and the results are falsified--will gain enough traction to let the Federation withdraw without losing face.

The entire process continues to grind him down. 

One of Po's older cousins is the head of the Xahean delegation. He's not quite as old as Chris, serious and clearly groomed to a life of public service, but has some of Po's irrepressible sense of the absurd that comes out to play every now and then. Chris appreciates how he uses his stream of titles and the traditional Xahean string of names to differentiate between those who annoy him and are left with the (literally) twelve names to address him, and those who get it shortened to Pasc. Chris counts it as one of his biggest wins that he's gotten to the second group, because Pasc had very clearly not been impressed with the original Federation negotiating team and that had transferred right on over to Chris.

For his part, Chris had, early on, pushed a little, somewhat circumspectly, feeling Pasc out as to how he felt about a teenager inheriting the throne rather than it passing to someone more experienced. The Xahean had laughed and emphatically distanced himself and his immediate family from that 'fishbowl life.'

"As much as my dear cousin pushes against its boundaries," Pasc has told Chris, "she was raised in the spotlight and is doing--in my opinion--a magnificent job of shepherding our people in this time of change and growth, especially given her age."

Chris agrees, but he does keep a weather eye out for instabilities and distractions. The Xahean capital is not without its intrigues--more than a few groups are distrustful of off-worlders and don't know why their queen puts up with them--but the ones who recognize Po's genius are louder and prouder.

When he's on Xahea for negotiation, he's gotten to the point where he tries to go straight from the whatever session he's attended to the housing Starfleet has provided for him where he can try to decompress before he has to go start the uselessness all over again. He's also gotten very good at not thinking about how things were different earlier, when he and Tilly might have dinner with Po if she didn't have anything official on her schedule or even when they spent every free minute out exploring the capital city or the surrounding area. It's not how it is now and there's not much he can do about it. 

Nine days out of ten, he makes it to his temporary quarters without so much as a side step out of place, but occasionally he catches a glimpse of Po and gets pulled into her orbit, because she is, under all the informality and youthful energy, ruthlessly determined not to give up on getting her technology out to the Federation. She likes the current head of the Federation team a slight bit more than the first diplomat she'd dealt with (which is such a low bar it's not even off the deck), but she has zero qualms about continuing to demonstrate that Chris holds the royal favor. Chris would ordinarily have sidestepped that limelight, but. Well. He's so far past caring about insulting the Federation (and knows that Rojas and the rest of Fleet Command are backing him) that he doesn't even try to deflect.

Catching sight of Pasc in a cluster of high-ranking Xaheans, Chris doesn't think twice about detouring to say good-bye for this round. Nothing got accomplished, but that's not for lack of either one of them trying, and he's found Pasc's dry humor a tonic during this clusterfuck of an assignment. He doesn't notice that Po is part of the group until he's only a few steps away, but then she moves and he catches a glimpse of fire-red curls as Tilly turns and almost runs away from the group as he takes the last few steps.

There's not really anything he can say, but Po steps into the breach, saying, "I've got this," to the rest of the group and gesturing for Chris to follow her. 

"Your Highness," Chris starts, but she shakes her head and keeps walking. Chris is stuck following to avoid a deadly insult, which he knows she knows. She leads him to one of the smaller state receiving rooms, which is mercifully empty, and gestures for him to take a seat.

"No, thank you," Chris grits out and she sighs and nods. He's not sure what he expects, but it's not for her to say very seriously, "Look, I know you probably deal with this all the time, but she… worshipped you. We all did."

"I—" This is all ancient history, and history that Chris finds particularly painful to have to discuss given where he is--where they all are--now.

"No, come on. Lorca was—"

"Yes." The less said about the Gabriel Lorca from the Terran Empire, the better, in Chris' opinion, if only because it's like a knife to the gut to think about how Gabe, _their_ Gabe fought so hard for honesty and truth in his career.

"And then, whoosh, there you were and you _cared_ and you yelled at admirals and Section 31 and worked the system to make it do the right thing, no matter how hard that was." She smiles at him. "You were amazing."

Chris can't meet her eyes; it was a lifetime ago, it feels.

"So, yeah, there was a lot of hero-worshipping going on."

"Past tense."

"Well, now you're a person," Po says gently, and he knows she knows more about that topic than he can ever dream. "You're real. That's _better_ , that's _so_ much better, Chris, but she still wanted to be the one who fixed things for you, because who wouldn't want to make things better for their idol? Not Sylvia Tilly."

"That's not what I wanted from her. From us," Chris answers. "At least, not consciously."

"Yeah, no, it's a lot."

"I wanted to be able to fix things for her, too. Especially since I did a lot to break everything." It's the first time Chris has actually said anything this specific out loud, to anyone. He's not sure it's helping anything, but at least he's said it, gotten it out of his head.

"You two are amazing when you're not making me watch you rip out each other's hearts." For as young as she is, Po can marshal incredible amounts of empathy and honesty. Chris regrets not ever having met her parents.

"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to put you in the middle of this… thing." 

"You're not; I did it myself," Po says. "I just wasn't sure you knew how much Tilly felt like she let you down." 

"That's not at all what happened," Chris says, the memories of his own words and actions in belittling her concerns fueling his insistence that Po understand the circumstances. "Not at all."

"I'm really not the person you should be having this conversation with," Po says, with a tiny smile.

"Well, the person I should be having this conversation with has made it very clear she isn't comfortable around me, so the entire point is moot."

"Have you asked?" For all her directness, Po keeps her voice very supportive, not at all accusatory. "I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think she never wanted to see you again, ever."

"I didn't," Tilly says from behind Chris, and he wheels around to see her standing under the stone-carved arch of the doorway. She's pale and her eyes are a red--Chris is guessing from crying, which is not at all what he wants to see--but her voice is calm and steady. Chris makes himself be perfectly still, stamping down ruthlessly on the need to go to her. It's not a need, he reminds himself. Just a desire. "I mean, all recent stupidity to the contrary, I--what Po said is true."

❦ ❦ ❦

Somehow, Tilly manages to keep her voice from breaking and she holds her ground when Chris spins around. It's been months since she's seen him, actually gotten to look at him for real, the stupid glimpses she'd gotten as she'd run away notwithstanding, and she's not sure how she feels about him looking as good as he does. On the one hand, it's nice to know her brain hadn't been making that up in her memories, but on the other hand, it's like a smack to the back of her head, like, he's _there_ , right there and she's really going through with this hare-brained scheme to stand there and talk to him like someone who would never dream of hiding herself away.

She knows she probably looks like a flaming disaster--there's no hiding when she's been crying, not with her complexion--but if she'd stopped even long enough to put some ice on her eyes, she's not sure she'd have kept her nerve up to come face Chris after a second humiliating retreat, so, yeah, here they are. 

"Ohhh-kay," Po says brightly. "You know how I told you both that if you wanted to talk, I'd make it so you had the space to do it? Yeah, I'm thinking that's what I'm going to do right now, so--" She darts over to where Tilly's standing and takes both her hands in her own. She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't have to. Tilly knows exactly what she's asking, and can't say no. She needs to do this, because she can't keep running away. It's pathetic. Tilly takes a deep breath and nods, and Po brushes a kiss across her cheek before she slips past with a quick, "Bye!"

"Tilly," Chris starts, but she shakes her head quickly.

"Wait," she says, "let me, just, apologize for being an idiot?"

"I don't think that's necessary," Chris answers.

"It really is," Tilly sighs. "I mean, thanks for not calling me a coward, but I'm not exactly proud of running away here." She shrugs. "Or last week, when you were waiting for Spock. I just--didn't know what to say or how to act and--I panicked, I guess."

"I'm sorry I've made it so that you--"

"No!" Tilly interrupts. "Seriously. It's not you." He's looking at her with what wants to be a skeptical expression, but she still can't tear her eyes off him and she's suddenly sure what she's seeing is less annoyance at her, and more him feeling like he's done something horrible. Or, at least, not meeting that internal standard he holds himself to, the one that's way higher than anything he ever measures anyone else with. "Chris," she says, more firmly than she thinks she's ever spoken to him, "this is _nothing_ on you, and honestly, I kinda resent not being able to own my stupidities."

That last part--she's not exactly sure where that had come from, but as soon as the words are out there, it's like a rock rolling off her chest. 

Chris starts to argue--she knows it from the look on his face--and she's glaring at him before she even realizes she's going to do it. 

"I'm serious," she snaps. "I've been acting like a, a _drama queen_ this past week and you letting me off the hook isn't going to solve anything."

"I--" 

Tilly glares at him again, but this time, he levels a pretty heavy look right back at her, and that, too, feels like it's good that it's happening. She knows she would have been freaking out earlier just thinking about dealing with that glare, and Chris being Chris, he probably had that figured out. Now, though, it's like he's not tiptoeing around trying not to upset her, but having an actual conversation with her.

"I'll grant you the drama queen assessment," Chris says, "but there _are_ two of us in this equation, and you not taking that into account also isn't going to solve anything."

"Okay," Tilly answers. "Point taken." She pushes her hair off her face, suddenly _so_ tired. "I'm still sorry I acted like an idiot."

"Apology accepted," Chris says. "I'm sorry for my part in leaving us in a place where that seemed like a necessary action."

"Okay," Tilly answers, and then catches herself and adds, "Apology also accepted," before she sounds like too much of an idiot, even if she still doesn't think there's any reason for him to be apologizing. She's the one who flipped out and sent him away because she couldn't deal, and yes, she acknowledges that she wasn't acting in a vacuum, but it's still hard not to skip right to where she'd had to throw away the most unbelievable thing.

And then, she has no idea what to say, which isn't something that happens to her very often, so she maybe, _possibly_ jumps too eagerly on Chris' sort of benign, "So, Spock tells me you're doing well?"

"I am," she says, waaaaay too enthusiastically, but her mouth is off and running and there's no stopping it sometimes. "I have my own lab at the university and--I mean, not it's not like a lab where I'm directing people, it's just my own little space but it's--I--" She literally claps her hand over her mouth to shut herself up. 

Chris is smiling, and oh, god, that swoopy feeling is Exhibit A on how nothing's actually changed about Tilly's feelings. She manages to hold herself together somehow, though, thank all applicable deities. "I'm glad to hear that," he says, "but for the record, I'm not in any way surprised that you've found a place for yourself."

"Well," Tilly says, "am finding, because I'm not really there yet, but, we'll see, I guess."

"You will," Chris says, and it's totally not fair how much support he can get into two tiny words, but that's why he's Captain Pike, Tilly guesses.

"How are you?" she asks quickly. She keeps her voice down, too. "I know this--the treaty talks-- they aren't going well, and I know that has to frustrate you."

"No," Chris sighs. "They're not, and yes, it does frustrate me." Not for the first time, Tilly wonders how much that had to do with everything that crashed down on the two of them all those months ago. "I'm practicing letting go of that frustration, though."

"For real?" Tilly blurts out, hearing the disbelief even as words leave her mouth. She claps her hand back over her mouth, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, that was really snotty."

"But true," Chris says with a self-deprecating smile that's more a twist of his mouth than anything real. "I'm working on it."

"I'm glad," Tilly says, hoping he knows how much she means it. "You shouldn't have to carry all the morons by yourself."

"Well, I did say I was working on it." This time, Chris' smile is a lot more real. "Not quite there yet."

"Baby steps," Tilly says automatically, and has to laugh at the blank look Chris is giving her. "It's -- a thing, with Po and me. Like, our mini-cheering squad for each other, where we celebrate even the tiny advances, and now, I guess, for you, too. If you want. Otherwise, you can let it go as another one of those Tilly things."

"I'm happy to be included," Chris says without hesitation, and Tilly reminds herself that he's unfailingly polite, that it's just a thing, nothing big.

"We'll add you to our list," Tilly answers. "I mean, between you and me, Po is doing, like, so much better with the queen stuff." Chris nods as though he agrees, and Tilly's mouth is apparently very happy to have someone semi-neutral to talk to, because it just keeps going. "Everybody is-- _finally_ \--settling down with it being her with the crown rather than her brother. Like, everything I've heard about him is about how seriously he took his role and all, but…" Tilly pitches her voice even lower, softer, and Chris leans in to listen. "I don't know… I don't think it's only that she's my friend that I think that her, uh, untraditional? take is maybe going to work out better in the long run."

"I can see that happening," Chris says thoughtfully. "Everything here is changing so quickly--it's only been a few years since they achieved warp capability--that leaning into doing things the way they've always been done could be crippling."

"Yes!" Tilly agrees enthusiastically. "Every time I go out in the city, I see more and more off-worlders. LIke, I'm not the only one almost always. And the Xaheans, they're dealing pretty well with it." She chews on her bottom lip. "Is it weird that I'm super-proud of them?"

"I think it's a good thing," Chris says.

"Yeah, it's kinda my default home these days." 

Chris gets that look in his eyes that says he's blaming himself for her being here again, and maybe it's that she's already fussed at him, or possibly it's all the irritation she's harboring against her own less-than-stellar actions of the day, but whatever it is, she still isn't finding it impossible find it hard to push back a bit.

"No," she says. "Don't go there. I'm here because this is what it's taking to keep the Sphere data safe. It's hard sometimes, but I'm getting it done." She wonders if he remembers saying that on the bridge, or if it's only something that meant all that to her but just how he is.

"You're right," Chris says. "You are, and I am tremendously proud of how well you've done."

"Okay," Tilly says, her hand back up over her mouth again. "Now I'm going to cry for other, less drama-queeny reasons." She gets herself back under control and takes a deep breath. "Thank you. That really means a lot to me."

She catches a glimpse of Spock out of the corner of her eye and realizes that he's waiting for Chris, and that Chris had probably been walking up to Po and Pasc to say his informal good-byes, which obviously hadn't happened because of her. 

"Sorry," she says, waving to Spock. "I didn't mean to keep you here."

"Not a problem," Chris says. "I'm more glad than I can say that you came back, that we talked. I'm sorry I don't have more time."

"Me, too," Tilly answers, and then, before she can talk herself out of it, says, "I--um, you have to be honest with me here, but I've missed talking with you--I swear I turn around at least once a day and think I should remember to tell you something--and… Could we maybe try talking over comms, like we used to? Before--everything?"

"I miss talking to you, too," Chris says easily. Tilly somehow manages not to fall over with relief. "I don't see why we can't try it, at least."

"That'd be awesome," Tilly answers. "Send me your schedule and we'll try."

Chris nods once and turns to catch up with Spock. Tilly somehow manages not to fall apart until he's gone, but then she has zero qualms about sitting right down and dropping her face into her hands.

❦ ❦ ❦

"Just so you know," Tilly says, "I'm stupidly excited and nervous about this call." She pushes her hair back off her face and smiles that sweet smile at Chris. "So, y'know, prepare for babbling."

"Duly noted," Chris says. "I've been looking forward to this, too, though, so it's not a problem." They'd had to reschedule the first of their calls because the _Enterprise_ had stumbled over an unexpected nebula, but Chris had moved heaven and earth to make sure the next one--this one--happened on schedule.

"I'm also not sure how this is supposed to go," Tilly says, her words tumbling out quickly. "Like, we used to, I don't know, ramble, I guess, and it feels like that's not going to work now."

"Well," Chris says slowly, because she's right, "you more-or-less know what I've been doing, so you could tell me about you?"

Tilly hesitates long enough that Chris is about to tell her that it's fine if she hasn't been doing anything, but then she sighs and shrugs and says, "Okay, yeah, so this is opening the proverbial can of worms, but sure, let's go ahead and get it out of the way." She looks at him squarely and says, very seriously, "I've been working with a healer at the university here in the capital." Chris is about to tell her that it's fantastic news, but she keeps going, saying, "Her research is in working with radiation poisoning, specifically Class D traumas from warp core accidents--"

There's more, she's still talking, but Chris' blood has run cold and everything, the walls, the screen, the porthole to open space, has pressed in around him and it's all that he can do to sit and keep breathing. 

"Chris?" He hears the concern in Tilly's voice and he makes himself respond.

"I'm here," he says, breathing steadily. 

"I'm sorry," Tilly says. "Should I call someone, Dr. Boyce--?"

"No," Chris says with a sigh. "I'm--fine."

"Sure you are," Tilly says, her voice tight and sharp, and Chris realizes how that must have sounded, how much it must seem like he's still pretending there's nothing wrong.

"No, you're right, but just give me a few to breathe through this whole surprise visit from the stress anvil."

She laughs a little, and he manages a semi-rueful smile and that, more than anything, breaks the mood. He's never actually been around someone after he's grayed out like this--he's always gotten himself somewhere private to get it under control, but Tilly sits quietly and lets him breathe and somehow knows exactly where to look so it feels like she's meeting his eyes, no matter that they're light-years apart.

"Okay," Chris finally says. "I lost whatever you said after the part about warp core accidents."

"We don't have to keep talking about this," Tilly says. 

"I want to know," Chris assures her, because he _does_ , regardless of what his fight-or-flight reflex has to say about it.

"Okay," Tilly says, clearly still doubtful, "but for real, tell me if I should stop. And if you don't, and stop talking to me, I _will_ message Number One." Chris nods, and she takes a deep breath. "So, specifically, Lani's investigating whether the spores from the mycelial layer can help accelerate the immuno-response to the poisoned tissues. In various species." She half-smiles. "That's where I come in." She shrugs. "Apparently, I'm the only known survivor of the mycelial network, so chalk one up for May and the rest of the spores. And you, for coming to get me."

"All I did was okay Stamets' insane plan," Chris points out. It had all worked out well, but at the time, he'd entertained a thought or two about losing the entire ship.

"Yeah, and I might have only been an ensign, but I know exactly how many other captains would have gone along with that plan, so again: thanks for coming to get me."

She's glaring at Chris fiercely enough that he can barely refrain from smiling.

"You're welcome," he says instead. "It wasn't all that hard of a decision to make."

"That's because you're you," Tilly tells him, shaking her head. Chris has no idea how to react to that, to the casual assumption that he does things others won't, at the faith Tilly apparently still has in him, but she's still talking so he lets it go. "Anyway. Lani is very tenacious and somehow got her hands on Commander Stamets' initial experiments and write-ups, and I can also fill in around that, so we talk a lot behind closed doors. And there's some engineering stuff that is really in its very first stages, so I'm gonna give that a skip until it's something more than random sketches that don't have any connection to anything proven." She pushes her hair back off her face. "So. That's what I've been doing for the last year."

She’s looking at him steadily, waiting for his reaction, and he nods slowly.

"That's it?" Tilly asks, and Chris knows exactly what she's not saying.

"No, but…" He sighs. "It's your life. Your call. I know that, but that doesn't mean I still don't want to tell you that you can't spend it trying to fix mine."

"I know," Tilly says quietly. "Does it help if I tell you it’s not just about you?" Her voice is very controlled. "I won’t lie to you and tell you you’re not a part of it, but there are so many others, here on Xahea, across the galaxy." She looks down at her hands. "Lei Lani has a very organic approach—traditional Xahean healing doesn’t really have much use for cybernetics. Maybe if someone had been investigating that more deeply, Ariam might not have had to have so many enhancements and Control wouldn’t—have gotten such a lock on her. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to, to _open the airlock_ while we were telling her how much we loved her."

Her voice trembles very faintly as she talks about Ariam, which isn't a surprise. Chris has gone through a lot in his time with Starfleet, but few things ring up as worse than how it felt on the bridge as they lost Ariam. Also not a surprise is how much Chris would give to be able to put his arms around Tilly _right now_ and comfort her. He supposes he's been pushing a lot of things into the back of his mind; how much he still cares for Tilly is definitely one of them, but it's still there and doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon. He should probably learn to deal with that before he does something to shatter this fragile peace they seem to be brokering. 

Before he can say anything, though, Tilly has pulled herself back together. "I don’t know if this will even be helpful in your potential situation. Michael said that she’d touched the crystal, and it showed her the future, but that when it was happening for real, it didn’t play out exactly like what she saw. And you know I couldn't really find you when I was researching, only the part about you retiring off-world. No further details. Is that because the records were a thousand years old and things got lost? Yeah, maybe. Is it because that pissing match you’ve been having with Admiralty as long as I’ve known you finally reached a head and you didn’t even want to be in hailing distance when you hit your limits? Also a possibility. Was that moment you saw a stopping point on the way to something better? Did that hideous…thing not even happen? God, I hope so."

"But I don’t know, and this all started because I was falling apart and needed something to focus me. And then it grew and I’m not apologizing for any of it."

"You don’t need to apologize," Chris says. "Not at all."

Tilly takes a deep breath and lets it sigh out. "Okay. God, I'm glad we had this conversation." She snorts out a laugh. "And I'm _absolutely_ glad it went so well."

"I am, too," Chris tells her. He doesn't say it, but he's not at all sure they would have been able to talk about the whole topic calmly before the break. He knows he wouldn't have been able to let go of it as easily and he suspects Tilly wouldn't have been able to keep her equilibrium even if he had.

"Okay, so tell me about the nebula," Tilly's saying. "What did it end up classifying out as?"

Her voice is curious and eager and Chris does his best to answer all her questions.

❦ ❦ ❦

Spock's mother does turn out to be pretty awesome in a lot of ways, except sometimes Tilly can see where she and Michael might have been at loggerheads. That's okay; it's not like Tilly has any kind of a sentimental view of motherhood.

Well. She does; she just doesn't think it actually exists. 

"A dance," Dr. Grayson is saying. "A _party_? Michael?"

"It was excellent. Shipwide, everybody there," Tilly tells her. "And Michael was… kindof having fun? I mean, I think she was super-happy to get paged to the bridge because of some time loop shenanigans, but she _almost_ went and danced with… one of the Security guys."

Tilly figures it's probably not the time to launch into the whole _thing_ that Tyler turned out to be, but he could be a safely anonymous, random lieutenant for parental purposes.

"Of course, she solved the time loop and saved the ship, so it was like a working party," Tilly says. "But it _was_ a party and Michael _did_ attend."

"That is not something I expected to hear," Dr. Grayson says. "I'm assuming that you were involved somehow?"

"Well, we were roommates," Tilly explains. "So, we--went together." She only barely avoids telling the ambassador's wife that her daughter and Tilly were each other's wing man, which is good, because even with her limited experience with maternal figures, Tilly doesn't think even the coolest and most chill mother wants to hear about their daughter's potential sex life. She could be wrong, but she's just met the woman; she'll stick with keeping things PG-rated.

The rest of the talk they have is… actually kind of awesome. It's a little weird to Tilly that someone she associates with a motherly position isn't dismissing what Tilly has to say about her time in Starfleet, but Dr. Grayson listens with every indication of interest and asks questions that are clearly based on what she knows from Spock's career. Tilly maybe chatters on too much, but it's so, so _nice_ to have someone to talk to like this.

"I would also be interested in hearing how you're adjusting here," Dr. Grayson says. "And the methodology you followed to integrate the Xahean/human xeno-linguistic transfer," which totally blows Tilly's mind.

❦ ❦ ❦

"And then I totally threw you research credit," Tilly's saying, so excited the comm transfer rating can barely keep up with her. Chris isn't even trying to hide how much he's enjoying her happiness with her meeting with Spock's mother. "Because--I don't know if I told you this, but when Po and I were fine-tuning the UT, all those trips where I thought I was going to die turned out to be super helpful because we were out all over the place and the data stack was picking up a ton more references than it would normally get if we'd only been using it here in the capital." She giggles delightedly. "So, hey, your adrenaline-junky ways were super-helpful after all."

 _That_ goes down with a sour taste, but Tilly's chattering on, and Chris tells himself to let it go. It's not the first time Tilly's made the reference and he's always managed to get past it, so he's not exactly sure why his brain is resisting as hard as it is now. 

"Chris?" Tilly says, and he comes back to the present to see her watching him, her head cocked in curiosity. "Everything okay? It's cool if you have to go be captain…?"

"No," Chris answers. "It's fine; I don't need to go."

"Sure thing," Tilly says, spiraling off again. Chris had missed the set-up to this particular story in his little fit of pique and the sensible thing to do would be to ask her to repeat herself, but that would mean admitting he'd let things get away from him and he's apparently not in the mood to go there. 

"Chris!" Tilly's clearly cottoned on to something being off. "What is up with you all of a sudden?"

There's a split second where Chris is tempted to tell her, but he pulls himself back from the brink and says, shortly, "I'm fine." 

"Look," Tilly says, "seriously, stop treating me like your fragile little princess and say whatever it is that you’re biting back."

"You sure about that?" Chris says, and he's probably sharper than the situation warrants, but it's more than a bit galling when someone throws what he likes to think of as his better instincts in his face. Especially when he's not quite to a point where he can admit that despite the best of intentions, they might not actually _be_ better. He breathes in once and softens his tone, but he _does_ keep going, because now that she's brought it up, there's no need to sidestep the topic. "Because once it's said, it's not coming back in."

"Yeah, but until you say it, it’s never going away."

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you," Chris sighs. "I'm just...amused--"

"Wow, there's so much sarcasm floating around here that we're going to go under in a second," Tilly snipes.

"--that I'm getting reckless lectures from the person who strapped themselves into a homemade timesuit."

She looks at him long and steady, and her voice is even when she says, "That was fabricated according to a proven design and had multiple fail-safes built into it."

"All but the last of which did, in fact, fail," Chris points out. "I'm not saying you were skipping around juggling nuclear devices, but you were, in effect, test piloting that thing." Tilly opens her mouth, and Chris knows she's ready to argue more, but he's not quite finished. "I also seem to recall a captain-to-ensign discussion about putting yourself at risk with reckless, solo investigations of dark matter fragments."

That had been possibly the first serious conversation they'd had on board _Discovery_ , and Chris had probably come down a little harder than he normally would, mostly because he hadn't been there when the incident had happened and both Saru and Stamets were livid--and terrified at what could have happened. So Chris had taken one for the team and given his best I'm-not-mad-I'm-disappointed lecture, which, judging by how quickly she's shutting up now, Tilly clearly had not forgotten.

"I--" She sighs. "Okay, I concede that one."

"So maybe you could give the adrenaline junkie line of hassle a bit of a break?"

"Maybe," Tilly says. "A little bit." She looks steadily at Chris, though, and adds, "Except there's a difference between an adrenaline junkie and whatever that was there at the end of last year."

"I'll concede that one," Chris says, because it's not an exaggeration. 

"I can't give that a break." Tilly shakes her head. "I won't."

"I'll try not to give you a reason to put that in practice."

"I'm--so glad to hear that," Tilly says, adding in a very, very soft voice, "I was pretty much terrified after the air show." 

"I'm sorry," Chris says. "I don't think I ever told you that, but I never meant to scare you. It wasn't a great decision and I knew it at the time, but..."

"But it's better now?"

"It's--I'm working on it," Chris makes himself admit, shoving down that automatic tendency to gloss over issues and present an unbroken front. He thinks that's always been how he's done things, but nothing about the Command track did anything to discourage it, and now it's practically set in stone. It doesn't help his current life setting, though, so he _is_ trying. "Nothing about the--situation has changed, except me, I guess. But it is better."

"Better is good," Tilly says. "'Working on it' and 'trying' are… inspiring."

"Fixing it would be inspiring," Chris says, more harshly than he intends. "This is--barely adequate."

"I don't know how you fix it," Tilly says, her voice and tone and body language all shifting to something that Chris can't help but read as fierce and protective and honest even if they're light years apart, talking on video screens. "I don't know that _anyone_ knows that, but I do know that trying and walking the path and letting yourself feel things is better than pretending it's nothing. And all of it is _hard_ , so yes, it _is_ inspiring."

Her words aren't all that different--or really, not different at all--from what Chris has been hearing from the psych teams or Number One or Phil, but Chris feels like he's hearing them clearly for the first time; and when she adds, "I mean, that's what you've been telling me, right? The journey is the destination, the road is the goal--why does that not apply to you, too?" there isn't anything he can say.

She waits him out patiently, and when he lets out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, she smiles and shrugs. It's not the happy, uncomplicated smile he remembers from their time on _Discovery_ , but it's still beautiful and generous and giving.

"You're right." Chris tells her. "You're absolutely right. But…"

"Yeah, yeah," Tilly teases gently. "Easier to say, words are cheap, do as I say, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." Chris can feel how rueful his own smile is, and for the briefest of moments, not even a second, hers grows infinitely loving and accepting before she sobers, and says, "You give that support and care to so many people. You mean it, I know you do, so maybe you can give yourself a break and accept it yourself?"

Chris takes a second or two to make sure his voice isn't going to break, but then says, "I am working on it."

"Hearing that is--it'll let me breathe easier," Tilly says. "And I'm here if you want to talk or… y'know, not talk and just breathe with somebody who's not in your chain of command."

"I'll remember that," Chris says and hopes she knows how strong she truly is.

❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly is twitchy as hell as Creation Day approaches. She can't get away from the reminders. Po's schedule is stretched to the breaking point, so she and Tilly see each other about two minutes every other day, and everywhere Tilly goes there's a reminder of what's coming. She gets it: it's like Christmas and Federation Day and everybody's birthday all rolled into one, so, yeah, all the shops and squares and streets are draped with bunting, and there are celebration pennants and flags flying from every roof. The university apparently hosts one of the celebrations leading up to the big day itself (which is, of course, centered on the palace and its grounds) so there's nowhere in Tilly's normal life that lets her forget what day is coming.

"Sorry," Po says when she and Tilly manage a video call. "I know all of this is completely over-the-top, but--"

"Oh, please," Tilly says, forcing her voice to be light and easy. "It's totally not your fault that I picked your most important cultural touchstone to stage my dramatic break-up. I'll be fine."

"If you say so," Po answers, and her voice is doubtful enough that Tilly rallies one more time. 

"I _do_." She arches an eyebrow at Po. "I am, in a weird way, looking forward to the sky show and the dance and all that. I mean, I hid in my room last year, so… I don't know, it kinda feels like I'm passing the Big Anniversary--" She gives her best air quotes and Po grins in spite of herself, because she's always thought the concept of physically representing grammar is too funny for words. "--And then I get a giant party to celebrate my keeping going."

Honestly, Tilly isn't even exaggerating much. She's dreading the build-up, and she's not wild about having to navigate all the tangled feelings she has around Chris being there to represent the Federation, but she's pretty sure she can get through it all and then she really will have a party. And the rest of her adoptive home will be celebrating with her.

"Okay," Po says, clearly still dubious, "But remember that nobody says you have to be happy all the time, so if you need to go somewhere and breathe, it'll be totally fine."

"Got it," Tilly says. "Plus, I don't think I've ever had as many clothes as I seem to need to do all of everything properly."

"Ohhhh," Po groans. "Please don't say the word 'clothes'. I think I'm changing five times a day for a solid sevenday. I'm dyyyyyying from all the fittings."

Tilly grins and they have to end the call--probably for another one of the fittings. Tilly knows Po's Minister of Protocol and Culture is keeping things as simple as possible (he's known Po since she was a baby and knows the fancy stuff isn't her favorite) but it _is_ Creation Day and Po _is_ the Queen. Some things just have to happen. Po knows it, too.

Tilly misses her Starfleet uniform suddenly. She'd wanted that for so long and it had been a physical, tangible representation of all her hard work once she'd been accepted to the Academy. She's still the same person, but that uniform had broadcast her achievement wordlessly. Now, she's back to people having to get to know her to get that level of information about who she is.

Plus, it was like armor in a way and she misses its protection. 

Some days, looking at regular clothes, even the things she's found and had made here on Xahea reminds her of her pre-Academy days when she was the nerdy social misfit with the wardrobe picked out by her elegant mother, the woman who had no use for the kind of trendy clothes the girls in Tilly's otherwise excellent school wore--and used to establish their social pecking order.

"It's not a thing--not now," Tilly reminds herself. "Sooo done with all that." 

Happily enough, it's not impossible to turn off that part of her brain these days. She's busy and productive and contributing--it's hard to beat that as a brain-evener. 

Plus, the woman who runs Po's wardrobe has taken Tilly on as a challenge--Tilly is her first non-Xahean--and everything that comes out of her suite is amazing. It's pretty much the best: Tilly gets to show up and try things on, and then ends up with great stuff without actually having to stress about it. Which is fortunate given that there really are a lot of official things that she's been invited to for the Creation Day festivities.

Tilly can also admit that the fact that Chris will be at a ton of them is driving a lot of that acceptance. The last thing she wants is to be Poor Sad Tilly, so she'll wear everything laid out and be a grown-damn-woman.

She keeps that in mind as the day--or truthfully, the week--of celebration edges closer and closer. If she's spending more time than she usually does in Lani's suite of labs and offices, she's not going to beat herself up over it. She's always been able to lose herself in research and the subsequent synthesis of information and now is as good of a time as any to block out the world. 

At the very least, it means that she's on a relatively even keel when she gets hit with the first sighting of Chris in his crisp, neat service dress uniform at the garden party kick-off to the palace celebrations, because that's, well, a lot. She manages not to embarrass herself, no matter that she thinks the more structured cut of the uniform fits him so much better than the softer, richer material of the field-grade dress uniform. He looks fantastic in that, too (because of course he does) but the less fussy material and cut of service dress definitely do allll kind of things to emphasize the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his jaw.

Not that this is anything new, but Tilly is so, _so_ screwed here.

So screwed.

She really needs to get back to that place she'd been early on, when yeah, she'd been hopeless about him, but it had been so out of the realm of believability that he might be looking back at her that it hadn't actually mattered. She'd kind of been edging close to that, but then they'd had their big fight/emotionally supportive/caring vid call and she'd only barely managed to get off the line without telling him she still loved him. 

"You had your one-in-a-million-billion shot," Tilly mutters to herself as she watches Chris cross the giant reception hall. "You had it and you couldn't deal and you put it back." He smiles a real smile (and _fine_ , she still gets kinda weak in the knees at that) at someone (Pasc, of course, because he and Chris get on like a house on fire) and keeps coming. (Xahean formal spaces are huuuuuuuge (Po says it's to honor the beautiful caves that honeycomb the planet), so it takes awhile to get across them.) Tilly has plenty of time to get her game-face on before he gets to her, but she's still reminding herself that she's incredibly lucky that he even still wants to talk to her when he's there in front of her, head tilted questioningly.

"Sorry," he says with another actual smile, though this one isn't as broad as the one Pasc had generated. "I missed that…?"

"Oh, no," Tilly says, somehow smothering the wince at her own stupidity that is dying to come out. "I was just--I don't know, muttering to myself about how--my mother would die if she saw me here."

It's not a bad recovery and basically the truth, so her own smile is way more unforced than she would have expected. 

"They would seem to know how to throw a party," Chris says with an answering smile. "Even if it's only the luncheon for the palace team."

"For sure. This is like the kids' table in the kitchen," Tilly says, having been privy to Po's schedule for the rest of the week. "I may not make it through the actual, proper celebration."

She's watched coverage from previous years while Po's been being fitted for outfit after outfit, stepping out of one elaborate outfit and into the next. The final celebration looks like a wave sweeping over the planet, with bonfires and fireworks and trails of lights that follow the sunset as it moves. When it finally gets to the capital city, Po says the night stays as bright as day. 

"Well, if you're planning on being at the inaugural ball tonight, save me a dance," Chris says as he moves off to greet one of the Council members, like he hasn't just started a chaotic chain of events in Tilly's id, one that starts with a proper dance and devolves wildly into the other, more euphemistic use of 'dance'. 

"Oh, my god, I am so _screwed_ ," Tilly whimpers quietly to herself, but then gets herself pulled together and says hello to the Xaheans she knows as she metaphorically staggers back to her corner of the compound and out of the fancy luncheon dress so she can lay around and be lazy before she has to get into the even fancier dinner and ball dress. 

She also has to decide what she's going to do about the small package that's sitting on the table next to her bed, the Creation Day present she'd gotten for Chris last year, but (obvs) hadn't given to him. She can, of course, not do anything with it, which is probably what she _should_ do, especially given how moon-y she's being about him lately. 

This is not what a large, non-logical portion of her brain wants. That part keeps insisting that there's nothing romantic about exchanging gifts for this holiday, that all the Xaheans she knows are running around in gifting frenzies. It's also saying that if she doesn't give this to Chris, he will be the only being she interacts with on any kind of a personal basis that she _won't_ be gifting this year, which theoretically puts more emphasis on the relationship than there should be.

The logical part of her brain is almost swayed by this, but deep down, every part of her knows there's nothing simple about her feelings. She has to keep reminding herself that she's had her chance and it's all in the past.

Getting all dressed up and playing Cinderella at the ball or not, she just has to face reality and move on. 

She can do this.

❦ ❦ ❦

As they step up onto the transporter pad, Chris adjusts the cuffs on his dress uniform and automatically gives Spock the once-over to make sure he's good to go, too. It's completely unnecessary--as the son of an ambassador, Spock grew up in this life of diplomacy and is far more used to the atmosphere than Chris will ever be--but it's a force of habit.

Una is there to--ostensibly--ensure the official gifts Chris is delivering on behalf of Starfleet Command to the Xahean Council are squared away. They've been checked and double-checked already, but they're all taking it seriously, as nobody wants a diplomatic incident on top of the steadily failing treaty talks. Mostly, though, she's there to rub it in about the dress uniform. 

She hadn't quite laughed in Chris' face when he'd suggested she make up the second half of the Fleet delegation, but it had been a very close thing, Chris judged. 

"You know you'll end up doing this sort of thing when you have your own command," Chris reminds her as she steps back behind the transporter engineer's console.

"All the more reason to avoid it now," she says with a very satisfied expression. "You go ahead and deliver the diplomacy. I'll do my duty for the bonfires and sky-rockets part of the celebration."

"You just like things that blow up," Chris says as he nods to the engineer to start the transporter.

"You say that like it's a shock," she's saying as she fades away, which at least means Chris is smiling as he and Spock arrive on Xahea. 

The protocol teams are swarming; Chris and Spock are greeted with polite deference and shuffled off to the reception area where the Xaheans are greeting off-worlders and accepting the gifts they've brought to celebrate Creation Day. Out of a sense of duty and fair play, Chris honestly does try to quash the petty satisfaction that he and Spock are directed to where Pasc's bond partner--the equivalent to an Old Earth Royal Duchess, second only to the direct line of succession in the planet's social hierarchy--is doing her duty while the head of the Federation delegation is making do with a random Councilor, but it's mostly hopeless. 

Gifts--at least the official kind--thus exchanged, Chris lets the protocol team herd them off to the next item on the checklist.

It's not only the Inaugural Ball they've been invited to, but also the banquet before, which adds an extra few hours to the already long day, but the chefs have bent over backwards to adapt traditional Xahean food to off-worlders so that they can share in the celebration. The least Chris and Spock can do is carry on politically neutral conversations while they take advantage of their efforts.

Once the banquet concludes, Po and her family and the members of the Council and their families lead the way into the sprawling reception halls and the party really gets started. Each of the mammoth halls is decorated and themed to one of the planet's biomes and the cultures who live there, so that all of the planet is celebrated with lights and music, performances, drink and more food. The central hall represents the capital city and thus has a bit of everything all jumbled together. 

Chris and Spock are quickly separated by the press of the crowd, but that's all right. They're only there as informal representatives of Starfleet, with no real agenda other than being seen as taking part in the holiday. Chris gets himself a glass of the Xahean equivalent of brandy--not to drink, not with how potent it is--and sets out to be agreeable.

He sees Tilly long before she notices him, the flash of her hair brilliant even among all the dazzling jewels and holographic fabrics surrounding her. Her dress is a deep, silvery blue, a shimmering sweep of fabric that, as Chris gets closer, replicates all the shades he knows he's seen in her eyes--and probably more, given that Xaheans can differentiate more frequencies than humans. It sets off the paleness of her skin without being so stark as to wash her out, and draws everyone's attention to her beautiful eyes and their intelligence and compassion and good humor. Chris is once more furious with himself for not having been able to be the person she needed him to be and stiffens his resolve to not let this unexpected second chance at forging even just a friendly relationship go to waste. 

At least one of the unofficial, personal gifts he's carrying in his pocket probably puts the lie to the part about the friendly descriptor, but he hasn't decided what to do about either of those. He just knows he couldn't leave the ship without them both. 

"Chris!" Tilly finally sees him and veers in his direction. It's still so crowded that it takes her long enough that Chris has himself firmly in control as she finally edges through the last part of the crowd. 

"This is _nuts_ ," she's saying with that welcoming gurgle of laughter. "And Po says this is nothing compared with the actual day and all the sky-rockets and stuff."

"Number One is eagerly awaiting the explosions," Chris says, laughing, too, because how can he not?

"I am totally unsurprised to hear that," Tilly says, unholy glee dancing in her eyes. 

"Aren't we all," Chris deadpans. "But enough about my first officer," he says. "You're looking very--"

"Out of place," Tilly interrupts. "I mean, this is all amazing, but yeah, no, it's really not my thing. I'm getting through it all by pretending I'm going to have to write a report for Michael when it's done, so she can add it to her database."

"I was going to say you looked lovely," Chris says, making sure none of the annoyance he carries at everyone who has so thoroughly informed the negative feelings Tilly has toward herself shows in his voice. But he'd really like to have a few minutes alone with them all, starting with, apparently, her mother. "But I'll add that you don't look at all out of place, except for maybe no jewelry."

Tilly snorts. "Po has these funny stories about tiara weight-training to wear all the stuff she has to show up in, but I'm pretty sure they're not jokes." She smiles a little hesitantly. "But, um, thank you for the compliment. It's mostly the dress. Po's design team had fun making something for a non-Xahean."

It's not at all mostly the dress, but Chris only says, "It is an amazing outfit."

"Oh!" Tilly says, grinning. "You know what the best part of it is?" Chris knows what he'd nominate--the low-cut, form-fitting bodice--but he's fairly certain it was a rhetorical question so he keeps his mouth shut. Tilly spins around so that the skirt flares out around her and then shows him where there are pockets sewn into the seaming. "They made it so I could carry a translator and not have anyone notice."

"Pockets are always a good thing," Chris tells her, but this one seems especially well done, as though whoever made the dress actually did make it for Tilly. Not only her hair and her complexion and her figure, but _her_ , the engineer who had to go to the party and still wanted to keep learning.

"It's very cool," Tilly's saying. "I can walk around and practice my Xahean but then if I need to, I can make sure I really am understanding."

"Very thorough, Ensign," Chris teases gently. "I'm sure Commander Burnham would be proud."

Before Tilly can answer, there's a low, sweeping murmur that sends the crowds craning their necks back toward the dais, and then Tilly's grabbing his arm and blurting out, "Holy _crap_ , the Council is going to have a collective stroke."

Chris catches sight of Po standing in the middle of a space that's cleared out around her, holding her hand out to a woman wearing a deep green and gold tunic. Tilly clutches him tighter, her hand digging into his biceps harder and harder until Po's hand is accepted and she's leading her partner out onto the dance floor with a smile so brilliant it dims every last piece of jewelry in the room. The orchestra continues smoothly on and the Xaheans, led by Pasc and his bond-partner, fill in around their queen.

"Are they still dancing?" Tilly whispers furiously at Chris, as even on her toes, she can't see over the top of the crowd. 

"They are," Chris confirms. "That's the first official dance of the evening."

" _Yesssss_ ," Tilly hisses, giving a modified fist pump that Chris knows she has to have picked up from the landing teams on _Discovery_. "Ohmygod, I totally did not think anything like this was going to happen."

"You want to fill me in?" Chris asks. "Still dancing, by the way."

"Um, yes, but we need to go outside or up to my apartment or someplace--not in the middle of this mob."

"Lead on," Chris says, looking back one last time to be sure Po is still dancing with whomever it is that has Tilly in her fever state.

Tilly takes him out and through the courtyard and then in a long twisting loop that brings them back around to her wing of the compound. It doesn't surprise Chris at all that she greets every single guard on duty by name, and most of them without the translator. He gets a few hard stares, but clearly, Tilly's good graces are buying him a lot of leeway. 

"Okay," Tilly finally says, dropping down on one of the carved wooden benches that dot the courtyard. "Oh, wait." She fishes in her pocket and makes sure her translator is off, and then waits to make sure Chris' is, too. "I really don't want anyone to accidentally get all this via the translator."

"Discretion _is_ the better part of valor," Chris says.

"I know--me and discretion, like, who knew?" Tilly rolls her eyes. 

"Strange times, indeed," Chris tells her and she laughs, that quick, bright gurgle that Chris loves to hear.

"Okay," Tilly says again. "That, the person Po asked to dance the first official dance of the first real official event of Creation Day, is Lei Lani, the healer I work with, and who Po has had a _thing_ for from before she was even queen."

Even with the automatic distraction that comes from hearing Lei Lani's name and knowing what she's working on, Chris catches Tilly's meaning instantly. He whistles long and low, because who Po might bond has been a matter for a lot of concern, both on and off the planet. "You're right; the Council is going to have a collective stroke."

"Ohmygod, I can't believe they did it," Tilly murmurs, shaking her head. "Po's been _adamant_ that she couldn't drag Lani into the whole queen thing, even though everybody who is not Po knows that Lani will do anything for Po."

"Pasc was right out on the floor with them," Chris muses. "That means the family knew and is backing her decision."

"Yeah, I think it's mostly that a lot of the Councillors are old and are still having trouble wrapping their brains around warp and the Federation and all that. There's a lot of agitation for someone traditional, to balance Po's, uh, untraditionalness, but they're just too slow to keep up with anything other than how it's always been done."

"Are you thinking this is going to be a problem?" Chris asks.

"No…?" Tilly says slowly, clearly thinking through things. "I mean, Lani comes from one of the old clans and she's incredibly well-respected and all. Her family isn't going to object to one of their own marrying into the royals, and if Pasc is okay with it, then that's the extended royal clan right there. Nobody's going to be able to raise any real objections."

"They don't have to be real if they hit a nerve," Chris points out.

"No, yeah, you're right," Tilly answers. "Most of the people the Council kept throwing at Po were old-line industrialists or military leaders, but I think her team can totally lean into all the amazing work Lani's done and how much she cares for Xahea and its people and cut off that line of objection at the pass."

Chris nods, thinking through the possibilities. Po does, for all her youth and impatience with the trappings of her position, hold her duty fairly sacred. He doesn't think she would have rushed into this without having a reasonably good idea of how to proceed. "I hope things work out smoothly, but keep me posted regardless."

"Sure thing," Tilly says, leaning back with a sigh. "Also, holy crap, how can this only be Day One of all of the partying? I'm going to have to pace myself or I'm going to fall over here soon."

"I'll let you go," Chris says, hiding his reluctance to do that. "I should go find Spock and compare notes."

"Oh," Tilly says. "Um, I--um, if you have a couple minutes--it's totally fine if you don't--I just--have something for you. Up in my apartment, if you can wait…? It's nothing big, but I had it--last year and…"

Her voice trails off, but Chris is easily able to finish the thought. "I'm surprised you didn't go ahead and trash it," he tells her. It's probably too blunt, but it feels good to actually acknowledge what had happened last year at this time. Tilly smiles a small half-smile that makes him think she agrees.

"I put it away," she says. "Where I didn't have to see it and think about--everything." She's quiet for a few seconds, but then stands up purposefully. "But I got it for you and I want you to have it." She looks down at him, her hair a halo around her face, each strand catching the light from the flickering torches set along the paths of the courtyard. "If you don't want it, that's okay. It's not anything huge."

"As it happens," Chris says, making his decision and standing up to take her hand, "I have something for you, too."

"Okay," Tilly murmurs. "I'll be right back."

It's not lost on Chris that they're not moving up to her apartment, that she's still holding him at arms' length, but then, why wouldn't she? 

Tilly's back down in the courtyard before he can go further down that mental path, a small package in one hand, wrapped in the dark cloth shot through with iridescent streaks that's traditional for gifts on Xahea.

"Like I said, it's not anything big, but…" She shrugs and holds the package out to Chris. "Happy Creation Day."

Chris takes the package and offers her an envelope, the more appropriate of the gifts he's brought. "Happy Creation Day."

"You first," Tilly says, biting her bottom lip. Chris unwraps the cloth to find a small holo-cube that cycles through pictures of the two of them from every continent on the planet--rock climbing, sailing, snow hiking. He pauses at the shot of the two of them next to a bonfire, a village festival that had lasted for days, Tilly's smile wide and happy and his own expression more relaxed and open than he would have believed possible. 

When he finally tears his eyes away and looks up, Tilly's watching him intently. 

"When I found this again, I looked and there were a lot of good memories attached and I thought you might want to see them, too," she says. "Since we're kind of back to being friends now."

"They are good memories," Chris says quietly. "Thank you." Tilly smiles a not-quite sad smile at him and he pulls himself together enough to say, more briskly, "Mine is not as personal but it's something I wanted you to have."

Tilly's smile brightens to something much happier and she rips impatiently at the envelope. "Oh," she breathes as the small, bronze rank insignia falls into her hand. "Oh, that's--it's--"

She looks up at him, her eyes brilliant and bright and wide.

"Ensign, Science Division," Chris confirms. "It's for the _Enterprise_ , but that didn't seem all that out of place."

Tilly looks back down, staring at where she's cupping the pin in her hand for long enough that Chris starts to worry that he's overstepped his bounds or hadn't read her right at all when he'd thought of this as a gift. There are tears in her eyes when she looks up at him, but he can't tell if that's a good thing or not.

"Thank you," Tilly finally says. "I--there are so many days when it's hard to be here with nothing from then--" She takes a deep breath. "And it means something, coming from you, too. After everything--not even our personal everything so much. Just. Everything." She waves her hand to encompass the last few years. "So, thank you."

"You're welcome," Chris says, relief washing over him, less about not having gotten the right thing and more at not having caused her distress. "It has been a lot. Everything." He glances back down to the holo cube, at their smiling faces. "Good and bad."

"I made that right before--it, we fell apart," Tilly is saying as he looks up. "And now, looking at it, I can't really tell what came from before we were together and what came after. I mean, if I think about it, I know what happened when, but with that first look, we don't seem all that different." She shrugs a helpless sort of a shrug. "I can't tell if that's a good thing, or if that's why it didn't work. Because we were just friends after all."

"We didn't work because I--"

"Not only you," Tilly interrupts. 

"You don't even know what I was going to say," Chris says, a little exasperated.

"You were going to blame yourself, like you always do," Tilly replies, not unreasonably. "So, you can finish that sentence, but only if makes sense for both of us to have contributed."

She meets Chris' gaze calmly and with a certain bit of humor dancing in her eyes, and he can't actually argue with her.

"I was going to say that we didn't work out because I was not at all in a frame of mind that let me take care of myself, much less make a good faith effort in a relationship--"

"So, yeah, that totally tracks with me, too."

"I knew it going in, but I pretended it would work itself out." 

"Oh," Tilly says. "I didn't realize it until, well, everything, but I think that's worse, so…"

"I'm fairly certain maintaining the friendship under the relationship was the only thing we did right."

"Well," Tilly says thoughtfully, "the sex was pretty fucking amaz--" 

Chris actually sees her hear what she's saying, clapping a hand over her mouth and blushing hard enough that her freckles disappear. "I didn't mean--I wasn't--oh, crap…"

"I'm not going to argue with you on that point," he says, somehow managing to find a credibly dry tone even if his brain is full of memories, in bed and out.

"My mouth, I swear--every time I think I'm getting some kind of control, whoosh, off it goes," Tilly sighs. "But, I mean, go us?"

"I won't argue with that either," Chris confirms, while privately mourning that he's become someone she has to watch her control around. He's used to it with his position as captain, but then she'd blown past all the walls he keeps up even in personal relationships, welcoming him into her life with an ease he's frankly envious of. The gap between what he had and what's left is glaringly apparent.

Of course, a stubbornly optimistic part of his brain reminds him that it's also within his power to try to bridge that gap, and this time, to pay attention to what happens between them rather than letting it careen wildly along of its own free will. 

Tilly starts to say something else, but then bites it back. The ensuing silence stretches out awkwardly, until Chris knows, with the sureness of a decision made on the bridge, that if he lets their relationship play out now, the way it is, that's all it will ever be. He needs to decide _now_ if he's good with that.

"Okay, I should let--" Tilly starts, right as Chris makes his decision and says, "I do have one more thing for you."

"Oh," Tilly says. "I--that's not necess--you didn't have to…?" Her voice trails off before she swallows hard and holds her hand, and the Starfleet insignia she's still holding onto--out. "This is more than enough, Chris, really. It means so much to me."

"That was," Chris says, keeping his voice measured and calm, not at all as though his heart is racing like he's back in high school rather than a veteran captain of a starship, "part of what I'd intended for last year, too." He smiles a little and hopes like hell he's doing the right thing. "And what I want to give you now isn't expensive or showy, so if you're thinking that you can't accept something like that, we're clear." 

"Okay," Tilly whispers. 

"Do you have anything that can take a standard Federation data chip?" Chris asks, mentally kicking himself for not thinking to bring one of the dozen readers/PADDs scattered around his quarters, just in case her answer is no.

She nods, though, and then rolls her eyes. "I have--well, it's one of Po's super-charged toys, so it reads Federation and Xahean and probably Vulcan and Klingon and Romulan and Bajoran and whatever else she got bored and programmed it to deal with."

"It's always good to know the geniuses," Chris says, and Tilly smiles.

"It's up in my apartment," she says. "I can go get it or you can come up with me?"

"Whichever you're comfortable with," Chris says seriously.

"Come on," Tilly says. "I want to know what this is, so just come up and we won't waste any time."

"Right behind you," Chris answers, keeping things as light and easy as possible, reminding himself that she might not view this second gift as anything significant. The hallways are quiet and only dimly lit, with everyone off at the celebration and it only takes a few minutes before Tilly's opening the door and the lights are coming up. 

"Okay, it's right here," Tilly says, unearthing her PADD from the cluttered top of her desk. Her apartment feels the same--full of random bits and pieces that she's found during her time on Xahea, with holocubes and plants and flowers scattered on every surface that can hold them. She always knows exactly where everything is, but anyone else is on their own. She spins around with the PADD in her hand. "Will this work?"

"It should be fine," Chris says. He pulls the data chip in its case from his pocket and hands it over to her. "It's--things I came across that I thought you might like or be interested in." He makes himself smile. "Things that made me think of you. Feel free to disagree with my assessments."

Tilly slots the chip in the proper port and Chris tells himself one last time that taking the risk is worth it only if he handles the outcome--whatever that might be--with honesty and grace.

❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly stares at the PADD, her eyes skimming down the index and her brain hop-skip-jumping to conclusions, conclusions that she firmly needs to keep in check. She looks again, and can't keep from blurting out, "There are _hundreds_ of entries here." She waves the PADD at him, which is, ugh, so over-the-top, but. She looks back at the index and maybe she's not jumping to conclusions. "Something every day."

"I thought about you a lot," Chris says quietly. "Every day."

"I thought you'd just… put me out of your mind," Tilly confesses. "Be the captain and focus on the ship."

"I tried," Chris says, his voice sad. "I spent a lot of time trying to be angry, play the injured party, but I never actually convinced anyone, least of all myself."

"But—"

"And then I got over myself and I started trying to figure things out, which meant I couldn't ignore what you'd said." Chris smiles and shrugs helplessly. "And then I thought about you every day."

"I thought about you, too," Tilly whispers. "All the time. I was mad, so freaking furious—Oh, not with you," she says "I mean, a little with you, because you're Captain Pike, you're not supposed to not be able to deal, but that's not really fair, or like, fair at all, and I wish I could say I got over it quick, but boy, did my psyche hold onto _that_ for longer than I want to admit. I was, I don't know, mad at the universe, for teasing me with the future and yanking it away, and then dropping you in my lap when I was falling apart and couldn't be what you needed and making it so I was the one who had to walk away and—"

She's babbling, she knows it, so she makes herself stop and take a deep breath, because this feels too freaking important for her to be gabbling her way through.

"Yeah, so I was really, really mad." 

"You had every right to be," Chris tells her, which is--again--more of that thing he does where he takes on everything.

"Well, you know, you kinda did, too," Tilly says. 

"Peace," Chris says with a half-smile that does more to settle Tilly's nerves than she could have believed possible. "I was frustrated and scared and--not reacting well."

"It's exhausting, walking around, furious at everything," Tilly says, which isn't the most insightful thing she's ever figured out, but given how long it had taken her to make the connection, she feels like it's something she should keep reminding herself.

"It is." From Chris' self-effacing smile, she's guessing he's kind of on the same trajectory.

"Which then makes a lot harder to actually deal with the crap that's actually causing the Eeyore vibes."

Chris laughs, short and sharp, as though it hadn't been something he'd expected, which is kinda the point. "Also true," he says. "And creatively described. Much more entertaining than the psych teams."

"It works, so we're good with it," Tilly says. "Po and me, I mean. It gets hard for her around her mom's birthday, and especially when she has to preside over the memorial celebrations. Itt's not something she likes to show in public--her real grief. So, yeah, Eeyore and us, that's our jam."

"Whatever works," Chris tells her.

"What worked for you?" Tilly asks before she actually thinks about it. "I mean, something obviously did and you're not--" She finally gets her mouth to shut _up_ and sighs. "Sorry, mouth running away again. That's completely personal and please don't feel like you need to answer."

"You say that as if I actually know anything," Chris says easily, like Tilly hadn't just presumed on whatever this is between them, which is a relief, to put it mildly. "I got annoyed by an intersystem standoff and turned Number One loose on their commanders, which was about the first time we interacted beyond what was strictly necessary for the job in months. It felt good enough that I decided not to waste the momentum."

Tilly laughs. "That is so you."

"Phil thought it was pretty appropriately timed, too." Chris answers. "And, of course, once I got him involved, there was no backing out, which I assume I knew when I went to him." 

"Like you said: whatever works, up to and including trapping yourself." Tilly chews on her bottom lip for a few seconds, trying to figure out if she's pushing past the limits of this tentative, fledgling relationship, but then decides that they're actually _talking_ and she's not stopping now. "Mine was more like a sneak attack." 

Chris arches an eyebrow, and Tilly laughs. "I know, I'm not very subtle, but--You're so going to laugh at me for this," she says. "No, really, because it's _such_ an angsty, nerdy, teenage-me thing to do, but—" 

She shakes her head. "Okay, so I wasn't a huge fiction reader when I was a kid—because science is amazing and why read made-up stories when you can read about the amazing reality we live in, but I had this teacher who was big on how fiction _is_ truth, the truths we're too afraid to see around us, for real—and, anyway, that was what got me reading fiction, and I figured that even if I was here, on Xahea, I could go back to _those_ friends, the ones that kept me sane when I was growing up and—I, um, so Gandalf may have gotten me on the right path here." 

She smiles and if it feels on the edge of helpless, she's okay with showing that to him now. "You know, the part about doing the best with what's given to you…? Yeah, so that seemed very profound during the winter here, which is _incredibly_ long and gray, if you hadn't noticed, and please feel free to laugh away."

"I am not going to laugh at _anything_ that helps," Chris says, smiling that ridiculously attractive smile of his, "but you're right, it's very, very you."

"I'm super predictable," Tilly agrees. "But yeah, it helped. It got me out of the ‘woe is me' phase and got me looking at what I could do and what I wanted to do, and yeah—I'm at least not an angsty mess these days."

"I'm so glad," Chris says. "I'm more sorry than I can say for everything I dumped on you and everything I couldn't help you with."

"Me, too."

The silence after that draws out, not quite easy, but not horribly awkward either. It's like neither one of them is sure what to do, or where they stand now. 

Finally, Chris says, "I'll let you go. You need to pace yourself, and I need to go find Spock."

"I'll walk back out with you," Tilly says quickly. " _I_ need to go find out what's going on with Po and Lani."

It's true: she does want to see what's up with her boss and her best friend, but seriously, her mouth is totally running away with things tonight, because she really can talk to Po in the morning, but apparently, she's not ready to not have Chris right next to her and her subconscious is conspiring with her mouth to make it happen.

It's easy between them on the walk back and when they get to where they're going to split, Tilly opens her hand and shows Chris the insignia she's been holding since he gave it to her. "Thank you again," she says. "For this and for all the things you wrote up for me."

"It was my pleasure," Chris answers. "Entirely."

"Happy Creation Day," Tilly says, and it's not only her mouth that's conspiring with her subconscious, but pretty much the rest of her body, too, because before she knows it's going to happen, she's leaned in to press a light, careful kiss to his mouth. And _then_ , she totally shocks herself by not turning and running away but staying there, one hand on Chris' forearm, to gauge his reaction.

"Happy Creation Day," Chris says back and then kisses her for real.

❦ ❦ ❦

As soon as the comm connects for the first of their regular calls after Chris is back out on the _Enterprise_ , Tilly's looking at him, serious and somber, words spilling out of her mouth. "What are we doing?"

"I'm--not sure," Chris admits honestly. He's been thinking of very little else in the month since the ball and their actions, but he can't settle his mind on any one conclusion. "Either we're building a more solid foundation or we are skating on the thinnest ice I've seen in a while."

"How do we tell?" Tilly whispers.

Chris can't remember the last time he's wanted to know the answer to something more. Every corner of his brain, honed by years on the bridge, where indecision is worse than almost anything, is yelling at him to _pick one_ and move forward, but he somehow manages to stomp all that down and say, "I don't know."

He shakes his head and shrugs helplessly. 

"Me either." Tilly nods along with him. She's biting her bottom lip, but Chris thinks it's more her thinkingthinkingthinking gesture and less the scared and upset one. "Maybe--maybe that's okay? Like, we both keep asking?"

"It's better than not asking," Chris says. 

"I don't want to pretend it didn't happen," Tilly says, firm and sure. "But I don't want it to be an all or nothing scenario, either."

"It definitely happened," Chris agrees. "No eliding that." He hesitates for a second, because it's incredibly difficult to read nuances over vid screens, but then decides he doesn't want to gloss over anything regardless. "I have to ask, though, if I took things too far."

Tilly is quiet for a beat, but then sighs and says, "I started it. I mean, yeah, you answered, but it wasn't unwanted-- _I_ didn't not want you to do it." She doesn't smile, but she doesn't look unhappy either, and Chris is happier about that than anything. "And, y'know, it was fine after that, too. No running away, no feeling like I needed to run away."

They hadn't actually been in each other's back pockets for the rest of the festivities, but both of them were in Po's orbit, and then Number One hadn't seen any need to avoid that orbit (because Chris damn well hadn't told her anything) when she'd arrived for the final day's celebration, so they'd seen each other daily for the entire week. It hadn't been the smoothest, but it also hadn't been incredibly awkward either.

"Never a bad thing to hear," Chris says. 

"And then," Tilly sighs again. "You know."

"I do." 

Tilly had been waiting for him as he'd made his way to the transporter station just after dawn for the final trip back up to the ship. Chris had somehow managed not to kiss her--because he wasn't sure he'd have been able to stop if he had--but when she'd told him good-bye and laid her hand against his face, he hadn't been able to keep from turning into the touch and brushing the lightest of kisses to the tips of her fingers. 

"So," Tilly says. "Here we are." 

"Well," Chris answers, "Here I am and there you are."

"Yeah, Starfleet is kind of hell on figuring out the personal stuff, no offense intended, Captain."

Chris laughs. "None taken, Ensign, and it truly is."

"On the other hand, and don't take this the wrong way, but this whole thing with you there and me here… It kinda feels… not nice, but maybe okay? I mean, it's shit, I hate it, but at least it's the shit I _thought_ I was signing up for with a Fleet career. Long distance relationships and people on different planets and all still kinda sucks, but it beats time-travel malfunctions and touch-and-go futures."

"I won't argue," Chris says, which might be the first time he's ever been able to let a reference to that damned crystal go without having to fight it tooth-and-nail. "It's still not great, though."

"Yeah, no," Tilly sighs, but it's a thoughtful sigh, not a hopeless one, and Chris is happy enough to say it matches his own mood. "Okay," she says, chewing on her bottom lip, "I am not a fan of carrying on relationship discussions over ship comms, but I am even less a fan of letting any bit of this--" She gestures between herself and Chris. "--go, so." She gives Chris a very determined look. "I'm game if you are."

"Nothing would make me happier," Chris says, letting a bit of the optimism her words sparked out from where he's otherwise firmly keeping everything under control. "Do you want to start, or do you want me to?"

"I'll go," Tilly says, easily enough, but then she goes quiet for a few moments. 

Chris makes sure he's staying relaxed and open, maybe even going overboard in performing it to counteract for the video screens, because he is not missing any opportunity here. 

"Okay, so, this is what I don't want." Tilly takes a deep breath and then lets everything come spilling out. "I'm not--this relationship isn't me grabbing at something to keep from going under. I want to be a partner. I know the age thing is… a thing, and you have a lot more life experience, but mine comes from a different lens and I don't need to be protected."

By the time she's finished, her words are rushing out and she's breathless with the last of them, but she's still firm and steady. Chris makes himself listen, just listen; he can figure out what he's going to say once she's through.

"I mean," she says, "it's not something that I think you thought I wanted, to be the pretty little princess, and I know it's hard not to slip into that mindset, but it's not what I want. I want to be a partner in any relationship and I somehow ended up with an incredible person to do that with."

She smiles at him, genuine and loving, and Chris can't not smile back immediately. He doesn't not want to smile, but it's so fast and automatic and uplifting, it shakes him more than a bit. Tilly's smile deepens and brightens, and then she gestures to him, "Okay, your turn."

Chris nods and lets himself think about what he wants to say. "What I don't want?" 

"If you're okay with that," Tilly answers. "That was, I don't know, what felt important to me; if there's something else you want to say, I am totally on board with hearing it."

"No," Chris says, drawing the word out as he thinks. "That's actually not a bad place to start. I think it goes without saying that we both want a healthy relationship--" 

Tilly nods, everything about her showing her focus on Chris and his words, which makes it both easier and harder to say, "What I don't want is to be the Captain." He smiles, but he can feel how tight and unhappy it is. "Most of that's on me--I've been that for so long it's almost my default. I have to think hard at times, to find what it is that I want, me, personally."

"Okay," Tilly says fiercely, "I really fucking want to be able to touch you now, and I'd be saying something about fucking Starfleet and fucking duty, but I wouldn't know you otherwise, so I guess--" She blows out an aggravated puff of air. "I _am_ calling myself guilty on the captain stuff, but that's less because it's how I see you--or, or even _want_ to see you--and more because I spent all the time I knew you, right up until you kissed me for the first time, reminding myself every single second that you _were_ the captain and I needed to keep my feelings under control. It still creeps in there sometimes."

"I hadn't actually thought about it that way," Chris says, a bit of the tension he's so used to carrying in his neck and shoulders that he doesn't normally notice it unknotting at her words.

"Oh, yeah," Tilly answers, and Chris thinks she's blushing a bit. "And believe me, Chris, whatever you think you know about what kind of feelings I was nursing about you, I am here to tell you you're not even close." 

"Well, if you think I wasn't doing my damnedest to project a nice-friendly-friend attitude while I was trying not to be inappropriate and manipulative, you've got another thing going, too."

"Aren't we a pair?" Tilly smiles with the tiniest bit of a self-mocking edge, which Chris makes a mental note to kiss away at his first available opportunity. 

_Captain Pike to the bridge_ , Nicola's voice says over shipwide comms. _Pike to the bridge._

Chris sighs. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay," Tilly says. "It's what we both signed up for. We'll keep going next time."

"We will," Chris promises. He needs to go, but he can't quite make himself cut the connection. "I--"

 _Captain Pike to the bridge. Pike to the bridge_.

"Oh, for the love of God," Chris mutters. True, this particular shift is very young, but he'd have thought _Don't page the captain unless you're under attack_ is more-or-less standard messaging in the Academy these days. He's foreseeing some very pointed discussions on appropriate reactions. "For the record," he says to Tilly, "we're all fine here, so I'm guessing someone at Command sent a nasty comm request and whoever's in the chair is getting nervous."

"Go be captain, Chris," Tilly says, laughing. "I'll be around."

"I am counting on that," Chris says, and if the words come out more seriously than he'd intended, he doesn't necessarily think it's a bad thing. He _is_ counting on Tilly being there and it's probably not terrible if she knows that.

"Ditto," Tilly answers with a smile so that it's the last thing he sees before the screen goes blank and he goes back to being Captain Pike.

❦ ❦ ❦

"What exactly is a 'shovel talk'?" Po says as soon as Tilly answers the comm in her lab office.

"It's when--" Tilly starts, but then her brain catches up with her mouth. "Wait. Why do you want to know?"

"I was having a chat with Chris and he asked me--"

"Wait, _wait_ ," Tilly interrupts. "Chris is _here_? Now?"

She hasn't spoken to him in months, not since the time they'd actually talked about their relationship, because the page that had dragged him away had been Command sending _Enterprise_ off on some super-secret orders, all comms locked down and no exceptions. (She is, of course, still Starfleet and she really does know that she wouldn't have met Chris under any other circumstances, but holy fucking shit, they do know how to throw spikes into relationships.) 

"Yeah, you know, the next round of the treaty negotiations start next--"

"Next week," Tilly says. "The talks start next week and Chris wasn't coming until, like, tomorrow, at the earliest and--Oh, my god, Po, _please_ tell me you didn't give him a shovel talk," Tilly groans, horrified.

"Well," Po says, "that's what I'm trying to determine. We were talking, like we do, and the conversation turned to you, as it does--" 

Tilly whimpers, because this is so, so, _so_ not good.

"--and then he asked me if I was giving him the Xahean version of a shovel talk," Po continues on serenely. "Which, as you now know, really doesn't translate well, so I said that it was the Xahean version of 'I'm the queen; I have entire _regiments_ of people totally dying to take care of things that I don't like' talk."

Tilly somehow finds the strength to ask, "And then he said?"

"'Point taken,'" Po answers promptly. "In that suuuuper dryyyyyyy tone he has. Don't take this the wrong way--or tell him I said it--but it's dead sexy when he does that eyebrow arch."

"And then?" Tilly's brain is spiralling out all kinds of disaster scenarios. She can't even pretend to play along with the dead sexy comment. (Besides. She totally agrees.)

"And then he went off to talk to Pasc," Tilly says, all breezy and cheery and all.

"Oh, thank god," Tilly breathes. 

"So?" Po asks. "What's a shovel talk?"

"We will talk about this later," Tilly promises, scrambling to get her system shut down and all her crap into her bag so she can go home and find Chris. "Pinkie swear; right now I really need to--"

"Yeah, I know," Po says, sounding very smug. "Go ahead and poke Lani on the way out so she doesn't spend the night there again."

"Sure thing," Tilly says. "I have to--"

"Gotcha," Po says. "But, Til? It's really good to hear you excited like this and I was trying to figure out what he thought he was going to be doing about--."

"I love you," Tilly says, "but please do not give any more shovel talks to the guy, k?"

Po cuts the connection on a laugh, one that absolutely doesn't bode well with her actually _listening_ to Tilly, which Tilly will just have to deal with later, because she's been working stupid hours and both she and her apartment are wrecks. At the very least, she needs a shower and maybe some caffeine before she sees Chris. She waves at Lani through the window into her lab and waggles her hand in the intergalactic gesture for _Call your girlfriend_ and manages not to kill herself as she races down the stairs. Someone is definitely looking out for her, though, because she only misses her best time across the city by a couple of minutes, and she's just opening the door to her apartment when Chris pings through on her comm.

"Wow, live and in person," Tilly says. "And a day early."

"Courtesy of Number One," Chris says. "It's probably not a good thing for a captain to admit that his first officer threw him off his own ship, but--"

"Your first officer threw you off your ship," Tilly finishes for him. "Yay, Number One."

"She thought you might appreciate it," Chris says.

"And you?"

"I didn't see how it would hurt given the last two months of radio silence."

"Ding, ding, ding, you win a prize," Tilly says, somehow finding it easy to be light and cheery. She loves that it's okay with all of her--not only the part of her that wants to be that way, but her subconscious and her heart, too--to be that way with Chris again.

"Let me figure out where they've got me billeted and we can sort out something to claim that prize," Chris says, and now that Tilly's listening, he sounds worn down. "Dinner or--"

"You should come up here," Tilly says before she even realizes the words are in her brain. "It won't be anything but the replicator, but--"

"I--"

"No, really," Tilly says, her conscious brain racing to catch up with her intuition. "If Number One threw you off the ship, I'm guessing it's 'cause the last few months have been a complete cluster and, all nice words about me aside, she knows you need some time to get your game face on before the pre-negotiation negotiations start. I've been totally caught up in research hell; you don't want to know the last time I even looked in a mirror. So, just come up here and we'll eat whatever weird food Po's programmed into the replicator system and it'll be fine."

Chris is silent for a moment--not long, but enough time for Tilly's actual, conscious brain to start to be horrified at how lame that offer sounded--but then he says, "You're not wrong about Number One and the rest actually sounds great. If you're okay with it."

"Good," Tilly answers, groping for a chair to sit down in. "You were never off my access list, so nobody should hassle you. Come up whenever you can."

She gives herself two minutes to breathe through all the giant, swooping loops her body seems to be caught up in, and then scrambles to kick all the crap that's scattered across the floor into her closet and dump all the dishes into the washer. She's starting to think about doing something with her hair when the door chimes and she gives it up as a hopeless cause. 

"Hi," she says as she gets the door open; and yeah, she was definitely right about Number One's motivations. Now that she's looking with a little (or a lot) more equilibrium in her own life, she can recognize the tense lines around his mouth and eyes for the after-effects of a long mission that they are. She thinks it's significant that she notices the stress and strain _before_ the usual _holy-fuck-he's-still-goddamn-gorgeous_ hits here. Like, maybe she's growing up some? 

"I heard there was a rogue replicator available for dinner," Chris says with just a bit less than his usual energy. Nobody but people who really know him would notice, but Tilly sees it easily now.

"Come on," she says, motioning for him to come inside. "I've probably got, like, the exact right number of functioning brain cells to decipher Po's Federation Standard descriptions before we try to eat anything, but it's always more fun with a partner-in-crime."

"Reporting for duty," Chris says with a grin that's easy even still. "I'm not sure I can even imagine what Her Serene Highness can do with a replicator and random Federation recipes, but I'm here to try. If we get Number One down here, she can probably work the bureaucracy to start issuing meritorious notes in our files--'courage in the face of incalculable odds', something like that."

Tilly snorts out an _extremely_ inelegant laugh as she thinks, _oh, god, I missed you_. And then, when Chris arches an inquiring eyebrow her way, before she can stop herself--or even think of all the reasons why she shouldn't--she says it out loud. "Just--I've missed you."

"Me, too, Red," Chris says before she can start to second-guess herself. He drops his go-bag in the corner, and for a second, Tilly lets herself think about how that's where he always used to put it. Then she wrenches herself back to the present as he says, "Sorry about the side-trip."

"It's a thing," Tilly answers as she heads toward her tiny kitchen area. "It happens when you run a starship."

"It does," Chris agrees. "The timing still lacked a certain finesse."

"Yeah, it pretty much sucked, but at least we got that one talk in." She gets the file up where Po had written out her descriptions of the new recipes she'd programmed into Tilly's replicator. It's somehow appropriate that Tilly's using it as something to keep herself semi-distracted while she's talking to Chris because Po has always used tinkering with the replicator as her own distraction. "It was a good talk," she adds, finally looking up and at Chris again.

"It was," Chris confirms. "I don't think we'd be here without it."

"Yeah, no, probably not," Tilly says. She sighs, and then adds, "And I kinda want to talk more--I mean, I really do want to talk more, but not right now. I--it's been intense at the lab lately and that's been good, because it kept me distracted, but now, I just want to decompress. So, later?"

"That works for me," Chris says. 

"I'm not trying to put you off or anything," Tilly assures him. "I do want to talk more, but--"

"Til, it's fine." He's using that smooth, easy, reassuring voice, but Tilly thinks it's for real so she lets herself kinda wallow in it. "I'm not saying that because I'm trying tiptoe out of Dodge and not talk--" Tilly snorts with laughter again-- _soooo unattractive_ , her mother says in the back of her head--but seriously, who says shit like that and makes it sound good? Chris evidently doesn't mind the laugh, not with how he's grinning back at her. (Tilly mentally sticks her tongue out at her mother and her sense of propriety.) "We absolutely can talk later."

"Okay," Tilly says, letting a long slow breath trickle out of her lungs. "Then--" she shows him the file-- "This is what we're dealing with."

Chris takes the last few steps to where he can read over her shoulder. "Okay. That is--ah, an eclectic list of food." When Tilly looks back at him, he's studying the list with the thoughtful expression on his face. "I'm trying to decide if I want to know what Po thinks barbecue should be."

"Well," Tilly says, laughing a little helplessly, because god only knows. "I mean, the base is always vegan, so, I guess we're safe…?"

"Relatively speaking," Chris answers dryly. "All right, Red, fortune favors the brave…"

He punches in the code for the barbecue, and then looks challengingly at Tilly.

"Or," she says airily, deciding to go for the pancakes on the theory that Po and sweet stuff usually turns out at least edible, "fools rush in."

"Also true," Chris says agreeably, juggling the plate out of the replicator and taking the fork Tilly manages to find for him. The rest of dinner goes along about the same--easy updates about the non-classified stuff Chris ran into on the _Enterprise_ 's very not-for-public-consumption side-trip, Tilly's progress in reading Xahean and yet another visit from Dr. Grayson, and all the shareable details about Po and Lani and the grumpy hold-outs on the Council. (The grumpsters are totally losing, Tilly is happy to report, because every time Po is in public with Lani, she can't help but be beaming at her, and Lani is clearly equally as happy and Tilly has overheard the most fearsome-looking warriors getting all choked up about (she paraphrases) Their Little Princess, Happy At Last. )

The barbecue is...odd and the pancakes probably could have used less sugar, but Po has totally cracked the code on blackberry cobbler, so they finish off strong. Tilly glares Chris back down onto her small couch as she gathers up all the sticky dishes and heads around the corner to deal with them. She thinks it's probably time to start the Serious Talk portion of the evening, but when she comes back around to the living area, all ready to say _Okay, time for words_ , she stops dead at the sight of Chris with his feet propped on the crate that she uses as a low table, sound asleep on her couch. 

Looking at him more closely, she decides it's lucky she hadn't been yelling around the corner, because it's super easy to see now, when he's mostly relaxed, how _much_ tension he'd been carrying, and she'd have hated to have disturbed him. She also decides she's probably looking a little _too_ closely and she should do something about that.

"Okay," she mutters to herself. "Time to stop staring like a creeper, Tilly."

Since she can't actually see herself _not_ staring at him if she's in the same room, she scribbles a quick note (mostly to calm that part of her brain that's throwing out all the worries, because she can't objectively imagine Chris up and leaving if he wakes up with nobody else in the room) and goes to take her very much needed shower.

❦ ❦ ❦

When Chris finally jolts himself awake, the lights in Tilly's apartment are dim, but as soon as he turns his head Tilly stirs from where she's curled into the one other chair in her apartment, head resting on her arms and bare legs tucked up under her robe.

"Hi," she murmurs, sitting up straight and sweeping her hair back off her face, the red-gold lighting up even in the not-quite dark. 

"Sorry," Chris answers, sitting up cautiously. "I didn't mean to drop on you."

"No, it's fine," Tilly says. "You looked like you needed it."

"Apparently, I did," Chris says, rolling his shoulders and trying not to grimace at how stiff his neck is. "But I'm sure you had better things to do."

"I got my shower," Tilly says, shrugging, "and I was going to read, but I got sucked down into the potential for a nap, too, so it's all good." She pleats the hem of her room, not quite a nervous tic, but definitely a small tell that she's feeling a bit out of her depth. "You've never done that before, you know?" She looks up and smiles at Chris. "You've slept here, of course, but it's always been just, you know, regular going-to-bed. So, I'm happy you feel like you can crash out here now."

"I...hadn't ever thought of that," Chris says, and now he's the one feeling out of his depth. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but I-- Really? Never?" 

"Never. Really." Tilly gives him a helpless sort of a shrug and Chris has to admit, he's not coming up with any memories to the opposite. "We were always going somewhere or doing something or getting back with barely enough time to catch a couple of hours before you had to go."

"It probably says more about how little I was sleeping at all than anything else," Chris offers.

"I hate that," Tilly sighs and it's Chris' turn to shrug. He doesn't like to admit it even now, but he'd been walking the knife's edge there for a while and it's probably good that he's gotten to where he can own it. "But, okay, it's still good to know you could fall asleep faster than I could deal with dirty dishes."

"I'll be sure to mention it to Phil; he's been grumbling about my sleep patterns lately." Chris tilts his head consideringly, and adds, "With good reason if I'm being honest. Some missions are like that."

"They are," Tilly says, her voice serious. "I know that; I just don't want to have to pretend it's not a thing." She leans over and holds out her hand, taking Chris' as soon as he offers it. "I'll try my best not to hover, but I can't ignore things that are happening. I know you have to be the captain, but just because you are--and you are an _incredible_ captain--it doesn't mean you don't deserve to step back and ask for help."

"I think you're underestimating my own ability to notice I might need help," Chris says lightly.

"I don't think I am." Tilly's voice is even and calm, but Chris knows she's not kidding in the slightest, _and_ that she's not at all amused by his attempt to lighten the mood. Or possibly, he admits to himself, to dodge the issue entirely. Judging by her expression, she's in the second camp.

"No," Chris sighs, conceding the point. "I don't think you are." Her grip tightens on his hand, and he smiles in return. "I'm working on it."

"I know." Tilly smiles back. "I'm glad. Not because of me, so much, but because of you. I can't--I hate knowing you're under water like that. It's awful."

"It is better, now," Chris says, "but it's the same for me. I don't like knowing that you're here on your own, cut off from your family, your ship."

"It was hard," Tilly says quietly. "Sometimes, it still is. I worry about whether Michael is letting anyone get close to her, and if Commander Stamets and Dr. Culber are still on track, and-- So many things." She shrugs a little, helplessly. "I don't think it's ever going to go away, but Spock's mother is actually really awesome and I have Po and Lani, so I don't feel so alone." She smiles. "And you. I--it's so good to know we're not not-speaking anymore, even if we weren't actually talking because Command sent you to the end of the galaxy."

"That's a good thing on my end, too; one that I hadn't held out much hope for," Chris says. "And speaking of Command, now is probably as good of a time as any to fill you in there."

"Oh, like that's not ominous," Tilly mutters, but she's smiling. "Am I going to need a drink? Or chocolate?"

"I'll let you decide," Chris says, as dryly as he can. "We don't have to talk about this right now, so long as it's sometime before this round of negotiations wrap up."

Tilly sighs and lets go of his hand to sit up straight. "No, let's do this. I'll self-medicate as needed."

"It's a mixed bag," Chris says. "Starting with the _Enterprise_ on her way to stand down right now, for some refit and repair and updating. Four to six months worth."

"Wow," Tilly says. "How much of that is because of things that may or may not have happened on this last we-can-neither-confirm-nor-deny mission."

"Some," Chris admits, holding up one hand to forestall the questions he can see building in her expression. "Nothing particularly dangerous, but added to everything else, it tipped the balance."

"Okay," Tilly says. "I'm trusting you on that."

Chris nods. "Once that's done, we're out for at least a year, probably closer to 18 months." He watches her face carefully. "Out-out, seeing how far we can go."

"Oh," she says. "So, they're pulling you off the negotiations here?"

"I honestly don't think there will be much more of that, unfortunately."

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure Po thinks that, too, though she hasn't actually said anything."

"And then, when we come back in," Chris stops to take a deep breath, because aside from Number One, he hasn't said this last part to anyone, "I'll be stepping down as captain and Number One will, knock wood, move to her own command."

"Wow, _wow_ ," Tilly says. "Wow. Are you taking another command?"

"In essence," Chris says. "Nothing's written in stone, but we're looking at Fleet Captain and the flagship."

"At the risk of being very predictable, wow again," Tilly says. "I--congratulations?"

"Stepping aside was always going to happen," Chris says. "It's the way of things, but I'm still a bit sideways about the flagship."

"You deserve it," Tilly says fiercely.

"Thank you," Chris answers. "Whether or not that's true--" Tilly rolls her eyes dramatically. "--I generally don't play that game very well, or really at all, so… We'll see if it actually happens."

"That's a lot," Tilly says. "No wonder you crashed out. You must have been spending _weeks_ in conference with Command."

"Let's just say Number One has had the conn more than usual during these last few months."

Tilly's gone over to her _thinkingthinkingthinking_ mode, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. "Where's _Enterprise_ going into drydock?"

"Between you and me, Starbase One," Chris says. It's not classified, but it's also not something that he likes floating around freely.

"Are you assigned there, too?"

"I have to be there for some of the processes, but there's no requirement. Most of the crew is going on extended leave and then picking up additional certifications for when we go back out after the rework. Number One and I will have some staffing decisions to take up with the section chiefs, resource planning, that sort of thing."

Tilly takes a deep breath and then says, "So, I'm just going to ask this, but I need you to answer honestly." Chris nods. "Would you think about staying here for at least some of the time? You don't have to answer now--it'd probably be better if we're only thinking about it, but would you? Think about it?"

"I will," Chris promises. Given how easy it would be to say 'yes,' he probably should do some hard thinking about all the implications, but the fact that Tilly's offered fills him with a solid satisfaction. 

"Okay," Tilly says with a smile that does Chris so much good to see. "And--I guess I'm late on telling you this, but when we talked, before, you said we were either skating on thin ice or laying a foundation…?" When Chris nods, her expression gets very determined, very focused. "So, I think I decided to go on like we were building something and just, I don't know, pay attention to things."

"I can support that," Chris says immediately. Very deliberately, he reaches over and brushes her hair back off her face. "Unconditionally." 

Tilly turns her face into his hand and Chris can't help but let his thumb trace over the still familiar planes of her face, the arch of her cheekbone, the curve of her eyebrows, the bow of her mouth, perfectly aware of both how much more he wants to do and how very close to the edge he's walked right up to. Tilly is very, very still under his touch, and the moment stretches out almost endlessly.

"Stay with me," Tilly breathes. "Tonight." 

She meets Chris' gaze easily, no hesitation, no uncertainty, her eyes clear and open and wanting.

From somewhere--god alone knows where--Chris finds the strength to keep himself from steamrollering in, instead saying, "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

"You," Tilly answers in that same barely there voice that Chris swears he can feel in every atom of his existence. "I want you, Chris, please."

"I want you, too, sweetheart," Chris says, finally allowing himself to move at least enough that he can lean in and kiss her carefully. Tilly sighs into the kiss and moves closer, combing her fingers through his hair and Chris lets a little more of his control slip. Her hair is still damp against the back of his hand as he skims the tips of his fingers down the side of her throat and under her robe, tracing the curve of her neck into her shoulder until she shivers against him and breaks the kiss long enough to gasp in a breath. 

Chris moves so he can taste the path his hand took, but can't quite make his mouth move past where her pulse is beating hard and fast under her jaw. 

"Chris," Tilly says, her voice low and rough. Her fingers tighten in his hair, enough that he hisses and then feels her shiver against him again. "Come here, come on." 

Chris follows her up off the couch and around the corner to where her bed is. They're moving slowly because she's moving backward and feeling her way and Chris is content to let her lead and keep his mouth on her skin, looking up only long enough to let her get the collar of his uniform unfastened and her hands sliding up under it. 

"Come on," she says again, letting go of him and scrambling back onto her bed, the tie on her robe loosening enough to let him see the beautiful pale skin of her breasts and stomach and thighs. 

"Working on it," Chris grits out, his hands almost shaking as he strips off his uniform shirt and fights with his boots. "Once again, Starfleet is offering complications."

"It's okay," she says, lying back against the pile of pillows she always has on her bed and bringing one hand up to play with her nipple, flicking at it until Chris can see it harden, and then pinching it between her fingers and rolling it slowly. Chris might as well be sixteen and completely inexperienced again for all the sense his brain is making at the sight. "No rush," Tilly sighs. 

"I'm going to have to argue with you on that one," Chris tells her, finally tearing his eyes away from her and focusing on getting his boots off. 

"It's all good," Tilly says, not quite gasping from whatever it is she's doing to herself. Chris grinds his teeth together and doesn't look until he's dealt with the boots and is shoving his pants down off his hips. Tilly's flushed and breathless, her bottom lip reddened from where she's biting it and her fingers still toying with her nipple.

"That I won't argue," Chris says, settling himself on the bed next to her, moving deliberately and drawing the moment out. Tilly's eyes are wide and dark on his and she gasps out a helpless sounding _oh_ when he lays his hand carefully--almost chastely--on her thigh, his thumb stroking small circles right where it starts to curve outward. He's not sure whether he's teasing her or himself, but it doesn't see where it matters. "But some things," he manages to say in what's probably the last calm voice he's going to be able to find for the rest of the night, "are better than others."

He slides his hand up Tilly's thigh, not quite pressing up into her at the same time he drops his head and flicks his tongue over the nipple she's been ignoring. Tilly whines and squirms under him and then, when he bites down a little less gently than he'd intended at the same time he pushes two fingers inside her, cries out sharp and wordless, and Chris is determined to do everything he can to make her come apart.

❦ ❦ ❦

Chris still knows every single spot that makes her crazy--the spot where her neck curves into her shoulder, the arch of her hip bone, the inside of her wrist; still knows exactly how hard to play with her nipples so that it hurts just a tiny bit less than it feels good; still knows how to turn her into a shaking, helpless mess. One part--a big part--of Tilly wants to lie back and let him do it, but there's a stubborn quiet voice that keeps saying _myturnmyturnmyturn_.

"Wait, stop," Tilly gasps, sitting up abruptly and dragging her robe halfway back across herself. Chris freezes, a look of not-quite, but not-quite-not horror in his eyes. "No, no," Tilly says, equally maybe-horrified at the entirely unintended reaction. Like Po always says, Tilly needs to do the talking _before_ he starts taking off her clothes and turning her brain to mush."No, you didn't do anything--I swear." 

She reaches out and lays her hand against his face, cupping his jaw and stroking along the arch of his cheek. Chris doesn't look entirely convinced, but he loses most of the ugly-bad tightness around his eyes, and then relaxes a little bit more when Tilly leans in to brush the lightest of kisses across his eyelids. That's all she wants--to make him feel good--and she's struck almost speechless at how easy this all could be.

"Let me?" she breathes, dropping more of the light kisses across his cheekbones, along his jaw, clustered at his temples. 

"Are you sure?" Chris asks, his voice quiet and almost shaky.

"Am I sure if I want to touch you?" Tilly asks, a little laugh bubbling up at how ridiculous that question is, except it apparently isn't, because Chris isn't laughing back.

"Yes," Chris answers, so seriously that Tilly wants to cry at how they've hurt each other. "You don't--after everything, it's okay if you aren't read—"

"I really, really, really want to," Tilly says, touching her fingers to his mouth to quiet him. He lets her, but he's watching her closely, so she takes them away, just long enough to kiss them and put them back. 

"A triple really," Chris finally says with a tiny quirk of a smile. It's a beautiful thing, Tilly thinks, smiling back.

"Third time's the charm," she tells him.

"So, they say," Chris answers. He eases back down onto the pillows and sighs out as Tilly follows. "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

Tilly takes him at his word, starting with light, happy kisses all over his face. She takes her time with his mouth and her hair falls down around them, a whispery veil that she sometimes has gotten grief about, has sometimes had partners who thought it was an annoying mess, but that she's pretty sure Chris likes. He sighs into her mouth, more and more of the tension leaching out of him, and she lets her hair trail over his skin as she kisses her way down his throat and across his collarbones.

His hands come up to stroke up her back, long, light touches that she never wants to end. 

"I'm okay with that," Chris whispers when she tells him that. "If I could touch you forever, I would, I swear."

 _That_ makes her want to cry, which is _not_ happening right now, not if she can help it, so she puts her mind back to seeing how good she can make him feel. She strikes metaphorical gold as she puts her mouth on the pulse under his jaw and when she lets it skim again over the curve of his collarbone, but when she bites at his nipples, they harden immediately and he jumps as if she's shocked him. 

"Sorry," she breathes, kissing gently where she's bitten.

"No, you're not," Chris says, breathless.

"Maybe a little," Tilley offers, but then bites at them again, this time not a nip, but staying in and worrying at the hardened flesh until he groans, ragged and broken, his hands digging so hard into the mattress that she can see the tendons standing out in sharp relief. "Do you like that?" she asks. "Or are you just letting me do what I want."

"Yes," Chris answers. "To either, both, I--it doesn't matter."

"It does," Tilly says, seriously. "It _does_ matter. Chris, promise me you'll tell me if you don't like something." She leans back up and kisses his mouth again, and then again. It's ridiculous that they're only now having this conversation in this direction, after all the time they were together the first time around, but they _haven't_ , and Tilly is determined to pay as much attention to him as he always does to her. "Swear you won't go off on some kind of trip just because I stumble down the wrong path."

"I will," Chris sighs. "But I don't think you can." She glares at him and he reiterates, "But I promise."

"Okay," Tilly whispers, kissing his mouth one last time and then starting a wandering path down the rest of him. She spends probably too long when she gets to his navel, but her hair is picking up a lot of slack, covering his thighs and cock and she thinks he's okay with all the ticklish parts of it.

Finally, though, she finishes with her teasing and, flicking her hair out of the way, goes right for his cock, relaxing her throat and taking as much of it as she can in one go. She's kinda out of practice--there has been no one she's wanted to indulge with in the year since she told Chris to leave--so she doesn't get all of him, but she is still pretty decent at the whole thing and gets a very impressive amount. Plus, she gets him all on the second try, so the first is like a build-up. The third and the fourth are pretty damn good, too, if she does say so herself, and--

" _Tilly_ ," Chris grits out. "I can't—I'm not going to last much longer if you keep doing—that."

"Maybe I don't want you to last, " Tilly says, liking how her voice is already low and a little raspy. She thinks Chris likes it, too, even before she adds, "Maybe I want to make you come, right here, messy, all over yourself--"

"You do that and I'm not--I can't fuck you." 

"Now," Tilly corrects him in a murmur. "If I make you come, you won't be able to fuck me _now_ , but there's always tomorrow, baby." She kitten-licks across the head of his cock and his breath hisses in. "Plus, that's just for fucking me with your cock." She licks at him again and smiles. "I could be very happy riding your hand right now and then letting you have me however you want me tomorrow."

Chris groans helplessly and Tilly is delighted at how well this is all turning out.

"Is that a yes, baby?" she whispers. "Will you fuck me with your hand so I can I make you come right now?"

"Anything," Chris grits out. "Anything you want." 

"I do want that," Tilly says, sure and strong. "I want to watch you come when I want you to. And I want you to be looking at me when I do it."

She drags her nails the length of his cock, lightly at first but then more and more firmly, holding Chris' eyes with her own. His pupils are huge, his eyes all but black, only a thin ring of blue around the edges.

"I like this," Tilly says. "I like making you feel good, baby. I like watching you trying so hard to stay in control while I play with you, but, Chris, baby," she drops her voice to the lowest of murmurs, "you don't have to hold on. You can come whenever you want," she scrapes her nails a little too hard across the head of his cock and he gasps a curse at her. "Whenever, baby," she whispers. "Come on, come for me, come all over yourself for me, let me make you dirty--" and he half-shouts and comes, shaking and blood-hot all over her hands and his belly.

Chris has never let go of that much control with her before and holy _crap_ does Tilly like it. She keeps watching him as she strokes him through the aftershocks, smiling at him when he finally opens his eyes, holding that gaze long enough that he knows it's intentional when she drops her head back down and licks him clean.

"That was incredible," she tells him when she's finished. 

"Pretty sure that's supposed to be my line," he tells her, his voice actually shaking now, one arm thrown up over his eyes, like he can't deal with any other stimulation. 

"We can be in sync," Tilly says, a bit of a laugh bubbling through her words. It kind of dies out when he reaches up with that arm to tug her down so he can kiss her and let her share his taste, but she's still half-giddy with how well that just went. "I'm absolutely okay with that. I love it."

"All right, then," Chris says, his voice still on the edge of uneven, but firming into something that says he's in charge, "now it's your turn." 

He rolls them so he can kiss along her jaw and growl into her ear, "Do you still want to ride my hand?" He bites at her earlobe and she hisses and shivers a little at the quick, sharp pain. "Or do you want to lay back and spread your legs, let me fuck you that way?"

"Ride," Tilly whispers. "You can go really deep that way."

"I can," Chris says with that deadly focus that makes Tilly go weak when she's the target. "I just want to be sure that's what you want, because tomorrow, I believe the offer on the table is that I can have you however I want you." He kisses her long and slow, his hand stroking down her body lazily and Tilly can feel herself go from 'mmm, nice' to 'right-the-fuck-now' in the space of a couple of heart beats. "Isn't that right, sweetheart?"

"Yes," Tilly says, in not quite a whimper, but something embarrassingly close, especially considering he's barely touching her.

"All right, then," Chris murmurs, reaching behind himself to bunch the pillows up so he can prop himself up. "Come here."

He gets her situated so she's straddling his thigh and then slips his hand under her, smiling as she gasps a pleased _oh_ at the two fingers sliding right into her while his thumb brushes against her clit. 

"So wet," he says, pressing deeper. "You're really going to have to work to get what you need."

"Or," Tilly sighs, rocking up enough that she can take advantage of gravity to drop back down, "you could give me another finger."

"Mmm," Chris answers. "I could, if you asked me nicely." 

Tilly's brain skips a stuttering step at that; Chris is watching her, dead serious and clearly waiting for an answer, and she only barely manages not to shudder. 

"What do you want, sweetheart?" he asks. He asks her that all the time, but this time there's an edge to the words that she's never heard him use before. Judging from how hard it is to catch her breath, her lizard brain is right there with him. "Ask me for it; you know I’ll give you anything."

Tilly licks her lips and says, "Please, Chris, fuck me with three fingers."

"Very nice," Chris says, and the next time she pushes herself up off his thigh he shifts his hand and works a third finger up into her. "Like that?"

"Yes," Tilly groans as he flexes them wide inside her. "God."

"What else do you want?"

"I--god, I don't care," Tilly grits out. "Anything."

He reaches up with his free hand and tweaks her nipples, not quite hard enough to be a pinch, but enough that Tilly hisses and can feel her body tightening around him in reaction. 

"More," she gasps. "Harder."

"Manners, sweetheart," he says. "I know you know how to ask nicely."

Something about the whole dynamic is turning Tilly's brain inside out even before she whimpers, "Harder, please, please," and Chris smiles a satisfied smile and catches her nipple in a tight, _tight_ pinch that shocks a low pained cry out of her throat and brings tears to her eyes. 

"Like that?" he says.

"Yes," Tilly gasps.

"Again?"

"Yes."

"You know what you need to do," Chris says. "I shouldn't have to remind you."

"I'm sorry," Tilly whispers, a shudder sweeping over her at the words. "Please…"

"Please, what?"

"Do it hard, please," she chokes out. " _Please_."

"Oh, sweetheart, your cunt likes it when I make you beg," Chris says in a low, dark voice that is like fucking aural sex even before Tilly gets to the things he's saying in it. He doesn't make her say it again, but takes her second nipple, already hard and aching from the treatment its twin received, in a slow, rolling pinch that tightens almost unbearably.

Tilly wails, but Chris doesn't let go, just twists tighter and tighter, tugging sharply at her until she's begging again, his name and pleasepleaseplease, which he somehow knows to translate as a sharp, scraping flick of his thumbnail over her clit and the world explodes around her.

❦ ❦ ❦

"So, that was…"

"Ahhhhhmaaaaaazing," Tilly half-sings her suggestion from where she's draped herself over him, her head pillowed on his shoulder.

"Unexpected," Chris offers. "I can go with amazing, too, but, really... Not what I was expecting."

"Yeah," Tilly sighs. Chris lifts his head to look down at her and she leans up to kiss him. "Okay, so I'm just going to say this, because _not_ saying things was a lot of what tripped us up before, but one thing that we'd kinda fallen into was…"

She sighs again.

"Til, if this is you trying to figure out how to tell me I'd been… disappointing you, please say it," Chris says resolutely. "I'll deal, promise."

"What? No!" Tilly crawls on top of him and kisses him until his arms come up to wrap around her. "It's kinda the opposite—you—you were always—sex was never not good, okay?" She kisses him again. "I mean, I once had this talk with Po where she basically made fun of me for thinking something was wrong while I was having screaming orgasms, like, _on demand_ , but you…" One more kiss, clearly for courage, but before Chris can brace himself, she blurts out, "You never let me do _anything_ for you, and I got it in my head that I was, I don't know, boring, or, or, just young and stupid and not fitting into your life, like, your actual life, which is where I desperately wanted-- _want_ \--to be."

She stares down at him, open and vulnerable and Chris can absolutely see that happening, and right under his own damn nose.

"That is not at all what I meant to be implying," Chris tells her, his voice very controlled and clipped, which isn't how he wants to be talking to her, but it's better than the snarl he's directing at himself. "I can see where you could think that, but it's not—" He shakes his head sharply. "I wanted it to be good for you—"

"Ohmygod, it _was_ ," Tilly says. "Like, mind-blowing." She kisses him again. "That was part of the problem: you'd start taking my clothes off and my brain would leak out of my ears and no actual talking would happen." She tucks her head under his chin. "But I wanted to return the favor and I never could quite get it done."

"You know it didn't have anything to do with you, right?" Chris says, and try as he might, he can't get his voice any louder than a murmur. "It was me, trying to control everything even though the big thing was completely uncontrollable."

"I know I wasn't in the best place," Tilly answers, equally as quiet. "But even if I had been… You wanting to be with me was a little too much for the fourteen year old nerd who is apparently still hanging around trying to protect me from dreaming about too-amazing-to-be-real Starfleet heroes."

She doesn't mean it the way Chris is taking it, he _knows_ that, but he can't help tensing at everything it's implying. 

"Wait," Tilly says immediately. "I'm sorry, that was--I know _you_ , okay? I know Chris, the guy who makes Captain Pike such a legend, and I know he's real, not the pretty story that everyone wants to be near, like, like a shiny penny for good luck." 

She's near tears now, and it's suddenly easy for Chris to let go of all of that issue and cradle her close, because the last thing he wants to be doing right now is causing her more distress. 

"I don't want him, or, well, I'm okay with the part of him that comes along with _you_ , because you're stubborn and amazing and not perfect and beautiful and you try so hard to be a good guy that I can't believe I get to be with you."

"Please don't cry," Chris says, still quietly. "I handled so much about us badly--"

"I did, too," Tilly insists. 

"I--can't actually agree with that," Chris says, hurrying to add, "But we're here now, and I don't want to waste any more time, so radical honesty is my plan."

"I'm on board with that," Tilly says, her voice firming. "I am not looking for the pretty fantasy, okay? I'm not. I want you more than anyone I've ever met, but I want _you_." 

There doesn't seem to be much left for Chris to do but hold her close and stroke her hair until she falls asleep.

❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly comes awake slowly, delicious warmth at her back. She knows without looking that it's Chris, curled up around her, but it takes the conscious part of her brain a long time to actually accept what the rest of her knows. When she finally can't help squirming away a bit, just so she can get to where she can look over her shoulder and confirm it with her eyes, it wakes him, too, and breaks the spell.

"Sorry," he murmurs as he shifts to where he can roll onto his other side, leaving Tilly with nothing but his back. "Didn't mean to crowd you."

Before her brain can overthink things, Tilly rolls, too, and reaches out to stroke her hand through the hair at the base of his skull. It's thick and silky, exactly like she remembers, and it slides through her fingers like water. Almost imperceptibly, Chris tenses at her touch, but then relaxes into it when she doesn't stop.

"No," she breathes, as though her voice has decided that anything loud will break this spell, the one where it's okay to touch and talk, the one where Chris won't disappear once the sleep fog clears from her brain. "It's okay; I was moving so I could look and see that it was really you." She hesitates, but then decides not to run away from her feelings. "Not dream-you, but actual-you."

Chris looks back over his shoulder at her, those glorious eyes serious and somehow sad. "I'm here."

"I'm really, really glad," Tilly says. She strokes her hand down the length of his spine and he sighs and relaxes into her touch. 

"Don't take this the wrong way," he murmurs, "but this is almost as good as the sex."

"What?" Tilly asks. "This?" She traces a path back up to his neck, skimming with the pads of her fingers."

"Yeah," Chris says, almost inaudibly. "Just that." He lets her nudge him over to where he's stretched out on his stomach, his head pillowed on his folded arms, the sheets pushed down to his hips. "The sex is great, but this is… this is so good. You, touching me."

"I like touching you," Tilly tells him. "I didn't know you liked it this much."

"As much as you want," Chris says, humming low in his throat as she rolls up so she can sit low on his back and get both hands on him. "I'll take whatever you want to give me." 

"Oh," Tilly says, stroking her hands down his back. "Oh, I am totally good with touching you lots." She squirms back a little, so she's sitting on his thighs and runs her thumbs alll the way down his back, bracketing his spine. "So much," she breathes, leaning forward to reverse the path and ending up laying herself down on top of him. "I was trying not to be a clingy little girl before, but I can totally put my hands all over you."

Chris huffs out a small laugh, maybe too ironic and bitter, but she knows he's working on letting a lot of shit go, so she does, too, and stays loose and relaxed. After a bit, Chris says, "I was working the dirty old man issue, so aren't we just a pair."

Tilly hums in agreement--really, it's (sadly) fucking amazing how well their issues feed into each other--but then tilts her head so she can whisper into his ear, "I'll work on letting my brain weasels go if you work on yours."

"Deal, Red," Chris murmurs, and Tilly wriggles around some more, until she can pillow her head on the back of his shoulder and they stay there until it's almost midday and they're both starving.

❦ ❦ ❦

"I hate to say this," Chris says as they navigate a few more of Po's replicator options, "but Starfleet is going to mess with us yet again." Tilly cocks her head, asking wordlessly, but also obviously not surprised. "My schedule is one break-out session after another all the way through the next four days."

"Well, that's no fun," Tilly says. "What about after?"

"It depends how long they want to drag things out, but anywhere from maybe an hour to an overnight before I need to be at Starbase One to walk through the rework."

"I feel like we could probably finesse that some," Tilly says, giving the words a very airy and unconcerned gloss that's clearly there to tease at Chris. "But then it _is_ your half of the sexytimes equation that's at stake, so, your call."

"The sexytimes equation," Chris repeats, amused.

"It's shorthand for 'I really did mean it when I said you could have me however you wanted me,'" Tilly says in her loud whisper. "But I can use the long version if you want."

She smiles a cheery, wicked smile at him and Chris takes the time away from his food to reel her in for a long kiss.

"I hadn't actually managed to forget that," Chris says dryly, his smile deepening as he catches her swallowing hard at the promise under the words. "But I was also thinking about your other invitation, to spend my leave here with you."

"I haven't forgotten about that either," Tilly says. "The hot and bothered part of my brain is a little more awake and noisy right now. Also, that kiss was dirty pool where 99 percent of my brain is concerned, and it's completely unfair to expect a lot of sense out of me right at this moment, _but_ the remaining 1 percent has an actual important thing it wants to say, so this is me, rising above my base instincts, and oh my god, it is not fair that a single kiss can make me babble like this--"

Driven by some unholy urge that he is usually much better at repressing, Chris leans in and kisses her again, longer this time, and more slowly. "There," he says when he finally draws apart. "Now, it's two kisses and you can blame everything on me."

"Don't think I won't do just that," Tilly says mock-severely, right before she leans in and presses a quick, sweet kiss of her own to his mouth. "Now, it's three, and we'll have to settle down, because," she takes a deep breath, "I actually do have one more serious thing to say."

"Okay," Chris says, getting himself under control. "I'm listening."

"It's about the crystal," Tilly says softly. Chris nods and pays attention to his breathing, keeping everything steady and even. "And it's independent of what we decide about you staying here on your leave, okay?" Again, Chris nods, and Tilly takes another deep breath. "I'm not asking you to break your word or try to dodge that vision--I mean, after everything we saw with Dr. Burnham and how she jumped through timelines, I have my doubts about what's _actually_ rock-solid, but you--I know you, and I know you don't go back on your word."

"Not if I can help it in the slightest," Chris says.

"And I know that you take _that_ a lot further than anyone else I've ever met," Tilly says. "So, this isn't me asking you to do that. What I _am_ asking is that you name Po or Lani as your next-of-kin, so that I-- _we_ \--know if something happens." She reaches out and strokes her hand through Chris' hair and it's all he can do not to turn into it and derail the whole ugly conversation. It won't change anything though, so he lets himself lean into her touch enough that she--hopefully--knows he appreciates it. "I know your parents are gone and there aren't any close relatives, at least, I haven't heard you mention any--"

"A few distant cousins that I haven't seen in decades," Chris confirms. Starfleet has been his family from the day he started at the Academy. 

"I'm guessing that you maybe have Number One down on the official stuff?"

"Phil," Chris says. "Number One doesn't need to be saddled with any--decisions that might need to be made any more than my cousins."

"Yeah, have you told her that?" 

Chris hasn't, of course, but from Tilly's snort of exasperation, she already knew that, the reasons he's told himself why it's not necessary, and is not buying any of them.

"Anyway," Tilly says with one last gentle tug on his hair. "You can't put me down, but Po and Lani are fine with it--I haven't told them anything," she says, before he can ask, "and it actually was Lani's suggestion, because she's good with things like that. And once you know Lani more, this will go without having been said, but we'll do everything we possibly can to make sure you're involved in any of those decisions."

"I--" Chris starts, but then has no real idea of what to say. 

"It's another thing you don't have to decide now," Tilly tells him. "I wasn't going to bring it up for a while, but--" Her gesture encompasses the two of them, Tilly back in her robe and Chris in the basics of his uniform, the late, late (late) breakfast scattered around the kitchen area and no real feeling that the night before had been a mistake. "We kinda skipped to the good part and… It fits the theme."

They have and it does, and Chris can admit that he is shit at accepting help even if it's only to himself right now. (He has a feeling Tilly already knows, but at some point, he owes her at least an acknowledgement.)

"I'll see what I need to do to get the ball rolling," Chris says. "Thank you."

He's not sure how gracious he sounds, but Tilly's smile is wide and happy, so he probably hasn't offended her.

"You're welcome." She leans up to press another sweet kiss on his mouth, but before either of them can take that and run with it, Chris' PADD beeps and Tilly sighs. "Starfleet."

"Starfleet," Chris agrees. He goes to find his boots and tunic, and then detours to full-length mirror at the end of her small hallway to button his collar and (regretfully) smooth the evidence of Tilly's wandering hands from his hair.

She meets him back in the living area with a cup of the unfortunately barely adequate coffee from the replicator and says, "I kinda already feel like a kept woman, what with the clothes differential we seem to be working here," she gestures wryly at her robe (under which Chris knows--and is determinedly not thinking about--is nothing) and his uniform, "but this would be the part where I tell you I'd would be _very_ grateful if you could lay your hands on actual, Terran coffee when you're on Starbase One. Very grateful."

She shimmies a little and laughs at his undoubtedly bemused expression, and Chris doesn't know what he's done to deserve her in his life, but he is incredibly grateful nonetheless. And it also occurs to him that he shouldn't keep that to himself.

"Tilly," Chris says, waiting patiently until she comes to join him at the door. He brushes her hair back off her face and then doesn't see any need not to keep his hands right where they are, buried in the wild curls while he drops a careful kiss on her mouth. "I love you."

"I--You-- _oh_ ," Tilly says, a sudden--but unfortunately not unexpected--edge of near-panic in her voice. Chris keeps holding her and doesn't think about all the things he'd like to say to her mother. "You don't have to say--I mean, I'm fine without--we can--oh, crap, crap, _crap_ \--" 

"Breathe, Til," Chris says, combing his hands through her hair. 

"Breathing." She nods, still with that frantic edge. "Right. Breathing." She tips her head forward until her forehead is resting on Chris' sternum, and then mumbles, her voice muffled, "Um. Can you say that again?"

"I can," Chris says. "Can you look at me?" She nods without lifting her head, but then takes a deep breath and looks up at Chris. "I love you," he tells her again.

"I love you, too," she whispers. "But you probably already knew that and I swear you don't just have to say it because you know I do--" She snaps her jaw closed with enough force that Chris can feel it himself.

"I can say it as often as you want me to," Chris says. "It's not a hardship." He brushes a kiss across her forehead. "It's a privilege."

"Okay," Tilly says, breathing in with a controlled surge. "Okay, I'm going to cry here soon and I'd really rather not be blotchy during all this, so I--" She leans up and Chris meets her halfway for a proper, long kiss, one that's broken only by his PADD pinging again. 

"I'm late," Chris says, but since neither of them is moving away from each other, he's definitely lacking his usual attention to that detail.

"Xaheans and the concept of on-time are only barely acquainted," Tilly says against his mouth, which is true enough, so Chris lets himself fall back into kissing her while his PADD graduates to a sort of desperate shrieking.

"Oh, my god, turn it _off_ ," Tilly finally gasps, stepping away from him and dragging her robe back closed. Chris manages to slap the alarm off, and then lets Tilly fix his hair again. "Okay, you look like your usual gorgeous self, go be the Best of Starfleet." She flaps her hands at the door and Chris is smiling as he picks up his duffel. "Feel free to comm me all the aggravating bullshit that happens and I will see you when it's done."

"Prepare to be bombarded," Chris says, keeping himself moving toward the door. "And you will definitely see me when I'm done."

"Chris," Tilly says as he gets the door open. She's smiling as he looks back over his shoulder at her. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Chris says, which is as good of a way to start a difficult posting as he thinks he might ever find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, _that_ took forever, sorry!


	5. 2266 - 2267 // 2259 - 2265

_2266_

Tilly has occasionally let herself think that she's played out all the worst case scenarios so often in her mind that if one of them actually happens, it won't be quite as horrifying. It's been years, after all, and she's made herself walk as calmly and objectively as she can through all of the research she could get her hands on. She has a plan and she knows her next steps if anything were to go wrong; and sometimes, in the bad parts of the night, when Chris isn't around and it's only Tilly and her overactive imagination, she thinks she might have worn the edges off the terrifying facts of what Chris has told her about the accident the crystal had showed him.

Turns out, yeah, no, not really.

Po's face is pale and drawn on the video screen. "Til," she's saying. "Til, Starfleet Command just contacted me, and, and Chris--"

Tilly misses the next bit of whatever Po's saying because everything around her has gone blank and her brain is screaming. No words, nothing but noise. 

That part of her brain wants to keep screaming and hide away, but the rest of her knows that means she'll never see Chris again, and that's enough to jolt her out of her freakout and back to the horrible reality.

"--Lani says the team is ready to go," Po is saying. "They'll be at the spaceport in under an hour." 

"I'm on my way," Tilly says, smacking all the fear back as far as she can get it. She knows Po isn’t sure that she should go out with the medical team, but Tilly has never contemplated staying back. She appreciates the concern—she knows it’s going to be hard to be there—but she’s _going_.

Which Po also knows, but--judging from the look on her face--it isn't keeping her from not liking it even now. That’s all it is, though, just an expression, no manipulations, and Tilly is seriously thankful for how upfront Po has always been about that care.

"Tell Chris we love him," Po finally says. Tilly has never hoped for anything quite as much as she's hoping she can do exactly that. 

As promised, Lani is waiting for Tilly at the spaceport even though Tilly had only detoured from her office/lab on campus to the little apartment she and Chris had bought when they'd decided they were for real and they needed some place to call their own. It's right near campus, so Tilly didn't have to spend as much time criss-crossing the city and her go-bag has been packed for years. 

"You're certain you want to go," Lani asks. "No one would think poorly of you if this was too difficult."

Tilly would think poorly of herself, but that's not why she's going. She shakes her head. "No, I've been with you with other accidents and--Oh, wait." She looks at Lani. "Chris put you up to this, didn't he?" She thinks hard. "When he talked to you about--" There's a tiny hitch in her brain before she can make herself finish, "when you talked about quality of life."

"He worries," Lani says.

"He does," Tilly sighs. "At least this is normal." She shrugs. "But I'm still going. He should know that."

"I told the captain that if such a thing were necessary, I would try my best but that I did not believe you would be dissuaded," Lani says with a smile.

"Yeah, and he told you to try it regardless, because he literally can't stop with the caretaking bit," Tilly says, smiling back. She's pretty sure it's a wobbly smile, but it's a real one and Lani will understand. "Or let himself think he can accept some of that himself."

"He did, and he told me he thought you would say exactly what you've just said." Lani's smile is serene, as always. "It is good that you know and accept each other so well."

"Sometimes, all the pieces really do fall into place," Tilly says. She thinks they both had to kick a few of the outliers into line with the rest, but that's between her and Chris.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2259_ ❦ ❦ ❦

"All I'm asking," Chris said, "is for you to keep an open mind."

"Such a loaded request, Christopher," Tilly sighed. 

"I'm aware that it does, yes, carry connotations that this is going to warrant, at the very least, some serious discussions, but I'm asking you to go with it long enough to have those discussions? Please?"

"Okay," Tilly said. "But don't blame me if these 'discussions' you're conceding up front turn into something a hell of a lot more."

She leveled her best I-am-not-going-to-be-distracted-by-your-pretty-smile look at Chris, as much to remind herself as him. She damn well knew that expression he was leading with and it generally only meant one thing: he'd done something he knew she wasn't going to like but he was dead set on it regardless. If he was already bringing 'serious discussions' into the set up, Tilly was absolutely going to have to be prepared to talk her way through.

"All right," Chris said, using that careful, controlled voice that she knew was him throttling back on the command voice, because, after several deliberate, mindful talks (that had in turn followed what Tilly could only call tantrums on both their parts), they had managed to work their way through his automatic tendency to drop into Captain-mode when things got serious and her equally automatic pushback to it. ("I'm just saying, _Chris_ ," Tilly had said through gritted teeth, "If you don't want to _be_ the goddamned Captain when we're together, stop talking to me like I'm your borderline imbecile of an ensign, _which_ , I will point out, you didn't do when I _was_ a fucking ensign.") "I'll start with this."

He tapped his PADD and the _File Accept?_ chime sounded from where hers was sitting on her desk. They'd barely been in the apartment for a week; her desk hadn't gotten to the point of completely controlled chaos yet so she settled herself in the desk chair to read through this file that even Captain Understated thought was going to spark some discussion.

Chris disappeared into the kitchen--the one room which, to Tilly's surprise, he'd had very specific, very detailed opinions about, enough that he'd vetoed several otherwise perfectly nice apartments during their recent whirlwind, real-estate-acquisition frenzy--presumably to let her read without having his eyes on her. Tilly also thought there might have been an element of retreat around the set of his shoulders.

She looked at the file downloading and thought, _Oh, this is gonna be *good*_.

She wasn't wrong, but in the spirit of open communication, she didn't immediately launch into a _You're treating me like a child. Again._ diatribe. (Honestly, it was a huge leap that she could voice that at all because the Tilly who'd first started into their relationship would never have even dreamed of saying that. It still wasn't particularly helpful to yell about it. So, you know: baby steps.)

Instead, in her own carefully controlled voice (which Chris knew was her throttling back on the hair-trigger she had on taking offense on things meant in good faith) she asked, "Is there a reason why I'm holding what is essentially a quit-claim deed to this apartment that we agreed to buy _together_?"

The last word maybe came out a little crisply, but overall, Tilly felt like she'd made her point without going overboard.

"Til," Chris sighed. "You know why."

Tilly did know why, but that didn't mean she wanted to talk about the damned crystal and the things it had shown to Chris, things that could--and did--yank him out of the soundest sleep if his brain turned the wrong direction in his dreams. She'd walked into this with her eyes as wide open as she could get them, though, and she had promised-- _sworn_ \--to herself that she would deal with all of it as honestly and forthrightly as she could.

"I do," she said, almost pathetically grateful that she could manage to keep her voice quiet and gentle. "But I think we need to say it, out loud, even if it's only between the two of us."

Chris was quiet for a lot longer than she expected, but she sat quietly with him and didn't try to answer for him (another one of her specialities.) Finally, he said, "I need to know that you'll be taken care of."

"Baby," Tilly said, "you know I'm good--and even if I'm not, Po will--"

"I need to know _I_ did what I needed to take care of you," Chris interrupted.

It was such a Chris thing that Tilly couldn't be surprised. She was, however, _shocked_ that he actually said the words. That wasn't usually a thing that happened when they were talking about the crystal.

"And you couldn't tell me that up front?" Tilly asked. They'd moved fast, sure, but this seemed at least as important as what section of the city they wanted to be in, or whether or not there was a balcony.

"I wasn't trying to trick you, or dodge the question," Chris said. "I--was enjoying everything about the search. Maybe I was kidding myself, pretending that this was--you're going to hate it when I say this, but pretending this was real--"

"Oh, you better believe I hate that," Tilly snapped, and Chris held up his hands, calling for peace.

"No, no, this _is_ real, but," he sighed, "reality isn't only this. This--" he looked around the apartment, still mostly bare of furnishings, but with the balcony and the good light and the kitchen that meant nothing to Tilly but had been a deal-breaker for him. "This is more than I've expected, for a long time, long before Boreth and the crystal. But that's a part of my reality, too, and by the time I couldn't stop kidding myself, we were all-in here and I didn't want to trash the process."

Tilly believed him--and believed he believed what he was saying--but …

"I get it," Tilly said. "It's not a surprise, not when I think about everything I know about you, but--you're just...presenting me with this _fait accompli_ and I know I joke about being a kept woman, but for fuck's sake, Chris, you just gave me a house." She willed back the tears that were threatening. "I mean, it's great, but I, I don't know, feel like I'm not really a part of the decision-making process, which is yeah, maybe a little ridiculous and over-the-top, but--"

"No," Chris said quietly. "I understand, I do, but I--needed to do this. I thought about doing it and leaving the deed with my papers, but I didn't want to keep it from you." 

"Okay," Tilly said. "Okay." She shook her head. "I swear to god, Chris, every single person I knew and was friends with, even Michael Burnham--who most definitely had her shit together--had issues with guys that were such a pain, and somehow I end up with the one who buys me a house. I mean, rationally and logically, I accept that you aren't passive-aggressively telling me I can't deal with life on my own--"

"God, no," Chris interrupted, sounding so horrified at the thought that even Tilly's irrational, knee-jerk fears got the message. "Not at all."

"I know," Tilly said, getting up to go wrap her arms around him, sighing with relief when he not only accepted her, but reciprocated fully in kind. Tilly laid her head against his shoulder and felt a tiny bit more of her shit drop away. "I know." 

"Also, you 'ended up' with me because you somehow have the guts to keep trying."

"Sometimes that's not a good thing, but for here, I'm super glad that part of my brain never shut up."

"Me, too," Chris murmured. "I'm sorry; I knew you valued your independence but I never thought beyond that to why."

"That's because you are a normal, thoughtful person," Tilly said into the soft, light material of his shirt because it seemed more important to stay close right at that second. "Which is, sad to say, not something I'm equipped to deal with in my initial reactions."

"I'll try to remember that," Chris answered, seemingly content to keep Tilly as close as she wanted.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2266_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Over the years, Lani's team has expanded to include specialists for a half-dozen different species. Tilly knows the lead doctor for humans, and he's excellent, but mostly, she's relying on Lani to navigate this whole situation. Officially, Tilly's on the ship as part of the engineering cohort for the life-support and treatment modules, which is her usual function on this team. Only Lani knows anything more. Tilly supposes people will start to put the pieces together once they actually find out who they're going to assume care of, but for right now, they only have medical records that identify Chris as human.

Lani comes and finds Tilly where she's keeping herself semi-sane by running diagnostics on the mycelial layer interface. Tilly doesn't have to do much more than look at the grave expression on Lani's face to know the news is not good.

Lani knows she knows, too, and folds her into a long, careful hug. 

"It's bad, right?" Tilly says into Lani's shoulder.

"Very, very serious," Lani answers. "We must take this time to prepare ourselves for all possibilities."

Tilly knows she's talking about Chris not even being alive when they get there, but Chris had made himself tell her everything he'd seen before he agreed to them living together and this whole situation is playing out the way he'd said, so she's less worried about that. She nods, though, and lets Lani hold her close for a few extra seconds before she straightens up and finds her resolve.

"Tilly," Lani says. "I'm very sorry to have to ask you this, but based on the records I am reviewing, I'm less confident in knowing the right path to take with the captain's treatment. We spoke at length about the quality of life he would want to achieve, but... I am not certain that we will be able to meet that. It's not impossible based on his current scans, but it's far from guaranteed."

"Okay." Tilly makes herself say the word, but she can't quite get it much louder than a whisper. "I understand." She does understand. Po might be listed as Chris' next-of-kin and hold his medical power of attorney, but Tilly is the one who will be actually making any decisions. There isn't any use hoping things will somehow miraculously resolve themselves by the time she gets there; Lani wouldn't have brought anything up if that was even the remotest of possibilities. This is what she's signed up for, Tilly reminds herself. Chris has always, _always_ taken care of everyone in his orbit, including Tilly, and she can do it for him now.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2260_ ❦ ❦ ❦

"Red!" Chris was calling from the little galley kitchen, his voice exasperated enough that Tilly looked up from her research notes from only the one word. "For the love of god, stop putting my good knives in the washer."

"Even when they're dirty?" Tilly answered, more than a bit confused. She was fine with this unexpected hobby Chris apparently had, where he clashed around in the kitchen and more than passable food emerged, and she'd thought she was being helpful and, y'know, _polite_ when she made it so he didn't have to clean up everything after.

" _Yes_ ," Chris said. "Wash them by hand, or leave them for me and I'll take care of them."

"Okay," Tilly said, still perplexed. "Is this a you thing or --"

"Not just a me thing," Chris said. "It won't destroy them, but it does wear the edge down."

"Huh." Tilly tilted her head, considering if she had ever heard that, but yeah, no. "I was today years old when I learned--"

"I know that most cadets never come near a kitchen," Chris stepped around the corner, drying his hands on the small towel he has tucked into the waistband of his jeans, "but I kind of assumed, given your family background you'd have had a cook or--?"

"Oh, baby," Tilly said, finally understanding. "If you think anyone in my mother's house ever touched actual food in order to keep me from starving when I was little, I am here to tell you that you're living in a very pretty dream world." Tilly got up and went to press a quick kiss on his cheek. "Why do you think I get so excited about your grilled cheese sandwiches? I mean, they're very nice, but they were also the first thing anyone's ever made for me."

Chris stared at her for a few seconds and then shook his head. "Some day, I'm going to run into your mother at some random diplomatic event and it'll be a miracle if I don't blow this entire thing sky high for all the things that I'm going to be tempted to say to her."

"Don't worry," Tilly said with a smile that was darker than she intended. "She won't even acknowledge you--you're Starfleet and completely unworthy of her notice."

That maybe revealed too many of the things that Tilly didn't ever talk about, but she guessed her subconscious trusted Chris, which of course it should. They were three months into the whole living together thing and besides, Chris was Chris. If she was going to trust anyone with her miserable, wanting-for-nothing-except-care, lonely childhood, he was the one. 

Still. It was kinda nerve-wracking to know these sorts of things could slip out so easily. 

"Well, small mercies, I guess," Chris said, light and easy. Tilly could see in his eyes that he understood everything beyond words that she'd just said, but--of course--her trust hadn't been misplaced.

"You have no idea." Tilly thought this smile was wry enough to settle her demons--and by extension, his concerns--but later that night, after all the mundane things that Tilly was glorying in doing together (chatting with Po, and then Chris showering at night so Tilly and got free rein to deal with her hair in the morning, brushing teeth and at least nominally thinking about what to wear the next day to make sure it was clean (another reason Tilly missed her Starfleet uniform), her brain kicked into overdrive and she couldn't fall asleep for all the stupid thoughts racing through it. 

"Til?" Chris mumbled after she rolled over one too many times.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Tilly said. "I didn't mean to keep you awake; I'll go--"

"You didn't, and don't," Chris said, laying one arm over her. "I'm fairly certain you're not stewing about me and the knives…?"

"No," Tilly said miserably.

"Do you want to talk about whatever it is?" Chris kept his voice low and easy, careful of her even when he didn't know what was going on.

"No." 

"You sure?"

"No." Tilly sighed. Chris waited her out, and she finally got her thoughts together enough to say, "It's just that half of my brain wants to be sure you know that I didn't ever want for anything as a kid, that I was just stupidly over-sensitive and my mom had a very important job--" The words were spilling out faster than she could sort them out, so she wasn't counting on them making sense, but he'd asked-- _twice_ \--so they didn't see any reason to be slowing down. "And then the other half is yelling at me that I don't have to defend her, that I didn't say anything untrue and that I'm allowed to have opinions about why my home life didn't make me feel very happy with myself, and then this entirely _other_ part of that same dumb brain is whispering about how this is really an idiotic way to spend our limited amount of time together and then--"

She shut her mouth with a snap because if she didn't do it at that point, there was a strongly less-than-zero possibility she wouldn't shut it until she was screaming.

"Is that it?" Chris asked, calm and even.

"No," Tilly sighed. "But then it all loops back around on itself and keeps going and going and going, blah, blah, blah, so yeah, mostly."

"Okay." 

Tilly waited but he didn't say anything more, only stayed with her until her breathing evened out. 

"That's all?" she finally asked. "Nothing but 'okay'?"

Chris leaned in and pressed a kiss to her temple, which Tilly wasn't going to lie, made her whole frazzled brain settle right in for a second or two. 

"You can have complicated feelings about your mother and your homelife," he said. "God knows I still haven't figured out things between my dad and me."

"I hate that my automatic reaction is to rush in and remind everybody that it wasn't really all that bad," she said. "Like I'm not allowed to be unhappy, because I'm Tilly! I'm chirpy! And I own that I did that, that I made the choice--subconsciously or not--to only broadcast the good stuff because I didn't want to cause anyone any more inconvenience that the allergies, and always having just one more question than everybody else, and, and not doing what my mother wanted me to do already was causing." 

She actually wasn't sure where all of this was coming from, but it was spilling out of some deep well inside her, and all because of a casual conversation about the best way to clean knives. Sometimes, she really did feel like a freak, but Chris was taking it all in without a single murmur, much less a counter-argument, so Tilly kept going. 

"I don't think I even realized how miserable I was until I wasn't, on _Discovery._ In the middle of a _war_ , with a manipulative freakshow of a captain and I was still happier than I was as a kid."

"You found your way," Chris told her. "You, on your own, found your place. You tell me I'm inspiring, but so are you." For a wonder, Tilly didn't burst into tears, but, okay, she did swallow hard against the lump in her throat. "And that's not even counting how glad I am you found Starfleet."

"Me, too." Tilly sighed and let herself lean into Chris. "Even before I get to the part where it all led to-- here."

"I will not argue with that," Chris said, and Tilly wriggled around until she could kiss him properly. 

Chris wasn't arguing with that either, but was letting her kiss him again and again, drawing her close and wrapping his arms around her. Tilly had always loved kissing, in and of itself, but Chris took it to the next level no matter if they were settling in for a long, lazy session or if they were ramping up in intensity. Tilly thought this one was the long, lazy kind, but then he got his hands up under the Academy tank top she slept in and she suddenly wanted a lot more skin-to-skin contact.

"You should take my clothes off," Tilly managed to say, gasping out the words between one long kiss and the next. "Yours, too." 

"Are you going to stop kissing me long enough so I can take care of that?" Chris asked.

"No." Tilly didn't know what planet he was living on, but in her world kissing was suddenly not optional. "I have full faith in your multitasking abilities, Christopher."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, Red," he said dryly, but since he'd already gotten half the obstacles out of their way _and_ Tilly rolled under him so that she was free to get her hands all over him, she wasn't going to waste any time arguing.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2266_ ❦ ❦ ❦

As much as Tilly had wanted to be right there as Lani and Iboye, her specialist for humans, met with the medical team on Starbase 11, she had to balance it with all the crap about _Discovery_ not being exploded and her not being dead and not giving anyone any reason to doubt that and leave something that could possibly lead to the Sphere data. She spends the time they're gone breaking down and reassembling every mechanical part of the mycelial interface chamber. It helps with keeping her brain from freaking out over the surprise she'd seen in more than one pair of eyes that Chris was still with them. Keeping distracted doesn't make his condition any better, but she reminds herself that half the team not having expected him to have survived is infinitely worse, and focuses on the chamber.

It's based on what she'd worked with on _Discovery_ , but instead of blocking all contact with the mycelia completely, it lets the medical team control the saturation level for the patient. The first prototype had been _very_ rough, only enough to prove the concept and then she and her engineering design team had worked to optimize it for both portability and sensitivity. It's nothing that she'd ever dreamed of working on, except it does drive science in new directions and that's always something she's wanted to do. 

It takes them longer than she expects to transfer Chris' care from the starbase's team to their own--Lani must have been all but sitting on Iboye, who isn't known for his tact and interpersonal skills and who had been ranting about the over-reliance on cybernetics the entire time he'd been reviewing Chris' prognosis and proposed schedule of care. 

_That's_ okay, too, because Phil Boyce arrives several hours into Tilly's wait, walking into the care unit with a "I thought you'd be here," that sounds exactly like him. When Tilly gets a good look at him, though, she can see how shaken up he is. She gives him a hug, like she's done since he'd retired and became more a friend of Chris' than a commander that served with him. In a low voice that isn't nearly as steady as it normally is, he adds, "It's a hell of a thing, this. A hell of a thing."

Tilly nods into his shoulder and spares a thought for how many years he's watched over Chris and how bad this time has to be with no warning, no way to have been braced for it all. Phil pats her back, and then they straighten up and pretend they're doing fine. 

"Sorry I interrupted you," Phil says, clearing his throat with a familiar _harumph_. "Go back to whatever you were doing."

He clearly wants a distraction as much as Tilly does, so she nods and starts putting the last section together. Along the way, he asks enough questions that Tilly ends up explaining the premise of the mycelial chamber, how the spores do the work of breaking down the poisoned tissues so the body has a better chance to heal the damage without having to also try to deal with what can't be salvaged. 

"It sounds scary," Tilly says, "letting the spores loose on living tissue, but that boost in clearing the radiation away gives the rest of the healing process a fighting chance." She looks up to see Phil looking thoughtfully at her, but he doesn't say anything, so she finishes up with, "It helps cut down on the cybernetic augmentations, which, uh, the Xaheans really don't like."

She can tell he's holding off on the questions until she's got the last of the hardware dealt with, and sure enough, once she's slotting her microtools back in their case, he says, "I'm guessing you being involved with something that matches so neat and close to this latest mess Chris has gotten himself into isn't a coincidence."

"This--" Tilly gestures to the care unit-- "this all has been the focus of Lani's research from before Po was even queen. Before Chris and I were on _Discovery_ , or when Po kinda showed up."

It's not exactly an answer, but Phil only nods. "All right," he says. "All right." 

Tilly puts the toolkit away and goes to check to make sure she hasn't missed any messages. She hasn't, of course, but it gives her something to do. She's a terrible liar, even when it's only by omission.

"Chris never would tell me what the hell had spooked him so bad when he was off with _Discovery_ ," Boyce says. "Wouldn't tell Number One either. Or Spock." He sighs. "I'm damn glad he told someone."

"He came and got me," Tilly says. She turns around and meets Phil's eyes. "Did he ever tell you that? When I was an ensign, during when he was in command of _Discovery_ , I got--taken. Into the mycelial layer." Phil raises his eyebrows and Tilly shrugs helplessly. "They, uh, wanted my help, but yeah, they kinda kidnapped me, and Chris, he wouldn't let things go and he ended up bringing the ship into the network." Tilly still remembers the jaw-dropping sight of _Discovery_ arriving, the overwhelming rush of relief that she wasn't alone. "Somehow, Commander Burnham and Commander Stamets found me and we fixed the issue that was messing with the layer and managed to get everybody back out before the ship got eaten."

It's been a long, slow trip, but somewhere over the years she's finally at a place where she can say all that without triggering a panic attack. She considers her next words carefully.

"So, that meant I was--I ended up being a primary source for Lani's research, back when this was nothing but one of a half-dozen avenues she was pursuing, but none of that--or this--would have happened without Chris deciding his lost ensign was worth risking the ship." 

"Well, of course he did," Phil says. "Wouldn't be him if he hadn't."

"I know, I tell him that all the time."

She's still not answering his questions--or his assumptions--but it's never been her thing to tell. For all that she could never shut her mouth when she was younger, this has never been a struggle. Phil doesn't press her; she supposes he's drawn his own (not incorrect) conclusions. 

"We--Chris and I--have actually talked about this--potential situation," Tilly says in a rush. Phil raises an eyebrow and she sighs. "Yeah, okay, we sniped a lot about it. And then Lani gave him the I'm-so-very-disappointed-in-you non-conversation, and _then_ we talked about it. And then he went and got into specifics with Lani."

"That's good," Phil says slowly, and Tilly looks up sharply at the layer of doubt she can hear under his words.

"This isn't some naive, hopeless gesture," she says. "And it isn't the first time this team has been out for a radiation poisoning case. Chris isn't even the first human." 

"I don't know that 'Fleet is going to let him go that easily," Phil says.

"We've talked about that, too." Tilly goes and sits at the technician's console because it's not like she's actually doing anything with her fidgeting. "Lani is the kind of stubborn that's really really nice. And super empathetic. She basically sits there and pats your hand and tells you she understands your hesitations--which she does, she's not at all blowing smoke--and doesn't move until you agree with what she thinks is best, which usually exactly what you should be doing anyway, you just don't want to admit it. And then Iboye, her lead doctor for humans, is… well, he'd be a real piece of work, except he saves the complete asshole persona for people who get in his or his team's way."

"I think I like him already," Phil says.

"Yeah, I'm actually waiting for the explosion, because he felt Chris' readings were okay enough to transfer before he walked off this ship, so he should be reaching his why-are-you-not-listening-to-me-you-idiots limit right about now."

"You let me know if I can back any of this up," Phil says, and Tilly sternly wards off the sudden tears that want to come spilling out at his support. "I haven't had a good excuse to ream out the bureaucrats masquerading as medical staff in a while now. Can't think of a better reason to get it all wound up one more time."

Tilly reaches out blindly and takes his hand, holding on tight until she's sure she's not going to break down.

"Anyway." Tilly finally manages to choke out. "Here we are. I don't know what might happen or if we'll be able to help or--anything. But," her voice strengthens without any conscious input from her brain, "he's not going to be alone. I won't let that happen, no matter what else might be going on."

"Of course you won't," Phil says with a smile that's more sad than Tilly likes. "Wouldn't be you if you did."

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2260_ ❦ ❦ ❦

"All I'm saying is that even if you don't want to talk to me about it, you should probably talk with Lani." Tilly had rehearsed this part a hundred times in her head, but she was still kinda surprised that she didn't sound defensive or upset.

"There's nothing--"

"No," Tilly interrupted. "Even if there isn't anything to do about the accident actually happening--" 

"Til," Chris sighed, and yeah, Tilly got it: he thought she was grasping at straws, which maybe she was, but too much shit had happened differently than it was supposed to for her to simply up and accept _this_ crystal's future. 

"Even if the accident happens _exactly_ the way you saw it, the rest of that vision wasn't reality and I refuse to put you through it if I don't have to." Tilly wanted to go put her arms around him _so badly_ , but if she did, she probably wasn't going to be able to let him go and they'd let another opportunity slip away. "And, again, even if that crystal isn't the be-all in predictions, you're Starfleet. Your whole life is an opportunity for disaster. It doesn't have to be that accident--it could be a hundred different things. The more Lani knows about what you want, what _you_ think is an acceptable quality of life for _you_ , the better we can judge if we have to."

"Tilly," Chris said, his voice heavier than she'd ever heard it sound. "What you're asking--I--"

"I know." Tilly curled her fingers into her palms, digging her nails in so hard she was going to have marks for hours, all to keep herself here, across the room. She really did know; she'd had the same not-at-all adequate medical directive that she knew Chris had. It was standard Starfleet and Lani had been horrified at the shallowness of it all. Tilly had gone through the conversation she was asking Chris to have, but of course, she didn't have the added bonus of having been shown a nightmare of her future in living color. She knew the difference, but she couldn't not press him. "I don't want to get it wrong if I--if I have to make any decisions."

That was probably a low blow, making it sound like it was all about her because she knew he'd do a lot more to take care of her than he would to take care of himself, but she almost didn't care. It wasn’t about her, not in the end, and she wanted to do the best she could for him. 

Chris didn't move for a long few seconds, but then he nodded once and left. Tilly felt her way over to the little couch they'd finally found, the one that they'd just brought home that morning, even if that felt like a hundred years ago, and hugged herself until she didn't feel like she was going to shake apart. She had never wanted to have this conversation--she'd chickened out of it a half-dozen times--but it had to happen. She knew it, and she thought Chris knew it, too. It still sucked.

The long summer twilight was fading into dark before she got up and listlessly wandered around the apartment, tidying random bits and pieces away and trying to decide if she was going to have enough mental energy to get into reviewing the latest design plans. She decided she could at least look at them and see if her brain might activate, but had only barely pulled up the first set of drawings when the door opened and Chris walked in.

"It's done," he said quietly.

"Thank you," Tilly whispered.

"No," Chris said. "You were right; it needed to happen."

"I'm sorry--"

"Not your fault. It is what it is."

Tilly still really fucking hated it.

Chris paced the length of the living area, and then went out onto the tiny balcony. The lights of the city were on and from the far corner Tilly knew he could see the waterfall that spilled down the front of the university's research center, where he'd just been. It was early yet; they wouldn't have started the light show on it, but it would be glowing from the crystallized lights that were always on. 

"I can't sit around here tonight," Chris said, coming back in and closing the door sharply behind him. "I need to--be out. Somewhere."

"Of course," Tilly made herself say. "Whatever you need."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Me?" Tilly stared at him. "I--where do you want to go?"

"I don't care," Chris said. "Pick someplace. Someplace new, someplace we've been, I don't care. "

"You want me to come with you?" 

"If you're not--" he gestured to the PADD she'd been trying to read. 

"No, I'm not--no." Tilly put the PADD down. They still had a list of places to visit across the planet--Pasc was forever thinking of one more natural wonder they had to see--but something new seemed too exhausting to contemplate. "The ice spires," Tilly said. "The ones near the--"

"I'll file a flight plan," Chris said. "As soon as we can get clearance. I--it's--" He stopped and took a second, and then said, "Throw some clothes for me in with yours?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course." Tilly jumped up from her desk and went to go shove some clothes in a bag. They'd have to rent cold weather gear when they got there, but she could at least make sure they had the basics.

By the time she came out of the sleeping area--not very long at all--Chris was back to pacing. It wasn't like he was impatient or annoyed, Tilly thought as she handed him the bag and dug her coat out of winter storage, but more that he couldn't make himself be still. The trip across the city to the local spaceport was tense and quiet, the agitation all but pouring off of Chris. Once they got to the small jump-shuttle the crown had set aside for his use (Tilly breathed a silent thanks to Po's team for always keeping it at the ready because she did not know how they would have managed a commercial flight) and he got behind the controls, though, the jagged edges started to smooth out. 

Tilly settled herself next to him and buckled the jump harness, staring out the forward screen as they left the lights of the city behind and followed the winding path of the river north.

"You can crash out if you want," Chris said, his voice low and quiet, fitting with the dark and the hum of the engines.

"I'm good," Tilly said, though she was worn down from all the emotions that had been flying around earlier. "In a little bit, we'll be able to see the stars."

"I'm not going to be good for much conversation," Chris warned.

"I know." Tilly smiled. "I won't even try to carry both sides by myself--please don't drop dead from the shock." Chris' mouth quirked up in the smallest of lopsided smiles, which made Tilly unreasonably happy. "I just kinda want to be with you."

"Don't know why," he muttered. "I'm shitty company at the moment."

"Because I love you," Tilly said. "You. Not your stellar conversational skills."

Chris reached over and touched Tilly's cheek; she turned her face into his palm and then said, mock-sternly, "Both hands on the stick, Captain."

Chris' smile was real that time and Tilly settled back and let the dark quiet of the cockpit wash over her. She didn't sleep, but she was in a hazy kind of a zone when Chris finally reached out again, touching her carefully on the shoulder and pointing to a few lights shining through the dark night.

"We're about to touch down," he told her. "The outfitters are sending a ground shuttle--or at least the UT said something close to that. With any luck, it didn't miss anything key, like how the actual message had a negative modifier on it or anything where we end up stranded here for the night."

Tilly nodded. "The dialect up here is, um, unique, to say the least." She shook her hair out of her face and considered the options. "It's okay; we can always stake out a corner of the cargo warehouse or something. It's not all that long until dawn, right?"

"You're entirely too accommodating sometimes," Chris said. 

"Probably," Tilly agreed. "Can I use you as a pillow?"

"Of course."

"Then I'm counting myself as a winner in this too-accommodating scenario." Tilly didn't say how she'd already done her fair share of pushing and that was why they were here in the first place, but only because it was the middle of the night and she wasn't entirely up for having _that_ discussion again.

"Besides," she continued, "we're going to the—" she almost said _the place where I figured out that the crush wasn’t really a crush_ , but took a side road that didn’t sound quite as pathetic—"the most beautiful place I've ever seen; a couple of hours of weird sleep isn't exactly a hardship."

Chris didn't say anything, only leaned over and kissed her, quick and light, before he got back on comms with the airfield and tried to sort out the landing instructions.

For a wonder, there actually was transportation waiting for them, complete with a driver. Someone must have tipped them off about the palace connection. Chris was already testing out the translator as Tilly got herself into the seat next to him. Without taking his attention away from how absurd the translations were, he absently put his arm around her shoulders and let her curl into him.

"Sleep," he told her. "It's at least an hour and there's nothing you need to be awake for." He stroked two fingers along her arm; it was too fast to be only a regular touch, but Tilly was absolutely fine being his worry beads for a little while. It took her longer than she expected to fall asleep, but it was nice, curled up with Chris, listening to his voice rising and falling as he talked with the driver. 

It was viciously cold when they finally got to the lodge; Tilly hadn't really forgotten how far the temperature dropped in the mountains when the sun went down--she had definitely packed every single warm thing she owned--but even just getting near untreated windows as she stumbled along the passageway between the garage area and the main building took her breath away. 

Chris literally tucked her under the thermal blankets in their room while he ran through everything the manager needed to know to get them out to the ice spires the next day. Tilly knew he needed to be _doing_ , that he had to keep moving when things were like this, but she kept her eyes open and waited him out. 

"Chris," she said when he finally killed the comm with the manager and was actually sitting quietly at the giant hunk of basalt that was serving as a desk/table. "You can't go out on the glacier without any rest."

"I'm not going to sleep," he said. 

"I didn't say 'sleep;' I said 'rest'." Tilly edged over, patting the mattress in invitation. "Come on. I'm calling in your pillow promise."

"I'm not going to sleep," Chris repeated, but he sat on the edge of the bed and started working on his boots. 

"But you'll rest," Tilly answered. He turned and looked over his shoulder at her, his mouth half-open with the last of his arguments. "And if you think I'll sleep with you roaming around, you're far enough gone that I won't _let_ you out on that glacier."

"You sound like Phil," Chris grumbled. He edged back on the bed, though and let her stuff the pillows behind his back and fool with the quilts and covers so she could get the two of them situated for maximum cuddling. This also necessitated a bit of wriggling and squirming on Tilly’s part, but she finally found the optimal angles and settled in with her head on his shoulder and the rest of her half-draped over him.

"You good?" Chris asked with almost a normal amount of dry amusement in his voice. Tilly hummed a wordless agreement—she didn't think she was ever going to get tired of being able to do this—but then he started drawing circles over her hip with his thumb and she ended up basically purring. "I’ll take that as a 'yes,'" Chris said. She could hear the smile in his voice, but then he added in a more serious voice, "Thanks for trucking up here with me."

Tilly was taking it as a huge win that he wasn’t apologizing for having actual, emotional needs, but she didn’t want to jinx it by metaphorically jumping up and down, so she kept it to a low-key, "Thanks for asking me. And letting me pick."

"Not what I expected you to come up with," Chris murmurs. "I thought for sure you'd have gone for one of the tropical places—I knew we weren’t heading to anywhere we’d been climbing—" Tilly shuddered dramatically even after all the intervening years, which was both a true reaction and enough of an act that it made Chris laugh softly even as he let her cling more closely— “But I didn’t think we’d be any place where we need professional gear to not die." 

It was an idle comment, Tilly could tell. She could play it off lightly and he wouldn’t press for more, but it was probably time to come clean. She didn’t even know why it was such a big deal to her brain—well, no, she knew. It was just an embarrassing reason.

"I picked here because it was a really happy memory," She tipped her head back to look up at him. "It’s beautiful and amazing and you took me here because you wanted me to see it, enough that you made it as easy as you could for me." She took a deep breath. "So, there we were, up on the edge of the glacier and it was just as amazing as you’d said it would be and … I don’t know, I finally admitted to myself that I loved you and it wasn’t a silly crush."

She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t for Chris to smile down at her and then drop a kiss on her hair. "I remember being very happy that you were here with me," he told her. "So I think I was following right along that same path even if I didn’t acknowledge it for far too long."

"Well, we were here then," she said, "and we’re here now, so I think we won."

"I think we did," Chris said.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2266_ ❦ ❦ ❦

They’re actually on the way back to Xahea before Tilly sees Chris. It had taken Lani and Iboye a ridiculous amount of time to make the transfer of care happen; Iboye has been seething at the delays and what he perceives as a immoral, collective dragging of Starfleet’s feet to implement the decisions of the patient’s next-of-kin (i.e., Po.) There had been a couple of tense minutes when he'd seen Phil and his uniform in the treatment pod, but then Phil had given him an equal amount of irritation and they'd come to a mutual, wordless accord. Tilly’s a little worried they’re going to be best friends and start plotting world domination.

She has about a half of a second to enjoy that thought before it all fades in the face of Iboye wanting Chris in the mycelial chamber before they’re even starting to look for what he needs for stabilizing. The orders that show up on everybody’s PADD’s are for a quick—less than a quarter of a millisecond—pressurized push of the spores, which isn’t terrible, but Tilly can tell just from everyone’s serious expressions that it’s not great. She makes herself stay back where she can monitor the pressures and concentrations for the chamber. It’s her baby and she knows it inside out, but it’s the medical team that puts it into action and she doesn’t want to interfere with their procedures and checklists. 

Phil must have noticed her stepping out of the treatment area because when she turns back from where she’s pacing in the passageway, he’s standing there and watching her. 

"I may not have been read into the specifics of this therapy," Phil says, "but I’ve been around enough to recognize when they’re going off book with a treatment."

Tilly shrugs helplessly, but doesn’t try to gloss over it. "I mean, I’m not medical—I did the design and fabrication of this portable unit and the big one back on Xahea, and mostly then I was focusing on the interface to the mycelial layer, but I’ve been out with the retrieval teams before and—" she takes a deep steadying breath, because her losing it this early on is not going to help Chris at all. "Usually, they don’t push that first flood of the spores until the patient is stable and the pain management team has done their thing."

Phil nods slowly; neither one of them has to say that none of Chris' vitals are remotely in the realm of 'stable'. 

"If they’re doing it now, Iboye seriously must not like what he's seeing overall," Tilly says. She tries not to think about the stinging she’d felt before May had warned off the spores all those years ago or how much more Chris is feeling now. "I trust him," she tells Phil. "Iboye. He really does not like to lose, and he takes it personally when he can’t outsmart the isotopes."

That’s Po’s assessment of him, usually delivered with a roll of her eyes; saying it reminds Tilly that they’re not alone. It steadies her, at least enough that she can glance at the monitors and have them make sense.

"They’re done," she tells Phil, and motions for him to come over to where he can see in the observation window. The care team is in full sterile gear, which at least means they haven’t had to close Chris up in complete isolation. Tilly is taking every scrap of comfort she can find.

"He’s going to look rough," Phil says to her as he flicks through the chart. "If these numbers from the scene are right, I’m not even sure how he’s made it this far."

"Stubborn," Tilly says. "Sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness."

"You are not wrong there," Phil agrees.

Tilly sits and watches and waits, following the care team through the familiar steps of the intake process. They’ve all more-or-less realized who exactly their patient is and they all make a point to stop and make sure Tilly knows they’re all with her in spirit. She’s seen them do the same thing with other families—she’s done it herself—but she hadn’t quite realized how very supportive it is. Po is on comms every single second she’s not involved in anything critical back home, and Lani, of course, is never more than a glance away from Tilly. 

Phil watches it all, and finally says, "Chris spent a lot of time worrying about you being alone and cut off—"

"I know," Tilly says. "I’ve told him over and over that it’s okay now, but—"

"Well, like you said, he does tend to run to pig-headed once he gets stuck on an idea."

"He really does," Tilly agrees.

After that, there’s not a whole lot else to say. Phil doesn’t leave, though, not even when they move out of the docking ring and start through the launch sequence to head back to Xahea. Tilly keeps her eyes on what little she can see of Chris as the team moves around him. Occasionally, she glances down at the monitors, but mostly she watches the curve of his shoulder and the outline of his chest under the sterile sheet. Finally, though, Iboye looks up from where he’s been keeping watch over all the flurry of standard procedures and meets Tilly’s eyes through the glass. 

She can’t read him even when she’s standing right next to him; from a different room and him knowing who they’re treating means he’s absolutely even-keeled and giving nothing away. He nods once to her though, and then tips his head to the clean room scrub-in, and all the air rushes out of Tilly’s lungs.

"Okay," she says, nodding back before she turns and looks at Phil. "Okay, he’s good with me going in."

"Sylvia," Phil puts one hand on her forearm. He’s the only person in the galaxy who occasionally uses her first name—and really, the only person she allows to use it. It’s something about when he uses it, she thinks. It’s always when his caretaking instincts are wayyyy to the fore, never to lecture, never to prescribe. "Are you sure you want to do that to yourself?" He holds up a hand to stop her automatic response. "Chris is not going to know—even without the painkillers and sedatives they’ve given him, he is not anywhere near conscious, not with what I’m reading about that breach."

"I know," Tilly tells him. "I need to be there for me, more than him."

"I said this earlier, but I can’t overstate it: he is going to look bad. Real bad. Are you sure you—"

"I know that, too," Tilly says quietly. "He’s not the first patient I’ll have seen—and I know it’ll be different because it’s him, but I promised I’d be there. I promised myself."

"All right," Phil says. "I’m not gonna give you any more guff about it, but I needed to know—for me—that I didn’t let you walk into that blind."

"Thank you," Tilly says. When he reaches out, she leans in and lets him hug her again, holding on for longer than she expects to. It’s good, though: she feels stronger when she finally steps away, and it carries over through her pulling on her iso-gear and nodding to Mhika, the nurse who’s clocking people in and out of the treatment room. 

"Okay," Tilly says to herself, breathing deep and reaching for her center. Now is the time to be strong, she reminds herself. She takes all the horror and the fear and, yeah, the _anger_ , that this just had to go ahead and happen to the best person she knows, and shoves it savagely away from all the rest of her. Now is not the time to lose it.

Mhika lets her in and Tilly walks steadily to where Chris is lying in an isolation bed. Phil hadn’t been wrong: he does look bad. He looks _awful_. The lesions and scales have already covered every inch of him that hadn’t been covered by his uniform—hands and face and neck—and she can see where the rest of his skin will probably be affected to a slightly lesser extent. Some of that is from the first flush of the mycelial spores, where they had started breaking down what they’d flowed across, but most of it is consistent with the truly overwhelming dose of radiation he’d been exposed to. Tilly steels herself and doesn’t flinch, doesn’t add so much as a breath of negative energy to the room. 

"Hey, baby," she says. There’s no reaction from Chris, of course, but she keeps right on talking. "I know the team has been talking to you, but I’m here, too. We’ve got you and all you have to do is take care of yourself. I’m good—Lani’s got me now and when we get back home I may have to peel Po off of me, so you focus on you."

It’s quiet in the room, so Tilly keeps talking, telling him that Phil had shown up and met Iboye. "I think it’s the start of either a beautiful friendship or a terrifying alliance, but it’s not going to be boring."

Mhika smiles at that, so Tilly knows it’s not only her brain going into overdrive and making things up to keep her distracted. She’s actually not too worried about that regardless; anything that keeps her functioning right now is peachy keen by her. She settles herself more comfortably in the chair and keeps up a steady stream of all the things that had happened since they’d last spoken, nothing huge or consequential, but all the tiny things that made up a life and love from the people who couldn’t be with him now.

It’s not much, but she reminds herself that she’s a part of the therapy that has the best chance (she truly believes this) of giving him a life that isn’t a horror to him, and now she can be the bridge to it. It's not a pretty fantasy and she doesn't know if it's going to work, but she can be here and present and know that they're still a team and he's not going through this alone.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2261_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly made herself push past the blah-ness of the day and get her butt back home in some kind of a reasonable time frame.

"C’mon, c’mon," she told herself. "Snap out of it."

It didn’t matter how aggravating her day had been—and it absolutely had been, one of those days where all the little things had gone wrong, so it was death by a thousand paper cuts, which had to be one of the few times anything her mother ever said actually applied to Tilly’s own life—anyway, it didn’t matter because it was one of their, her and Chris’, pre-arranged call nights. The _Enterprise_ was out doing its thing, being an awesome ambassador of the Federation and while she and Chris talked or dropped messages to each other almost every day, they had a standing date every couple of weeks where they hung out and really talked, for at least an hour. 

It was one of those mental health things that Starfleet Medical encouraged its commanders to practice, to normalize it among the rank-and-file, and Chris being Chris, they definitely took the time to follow the recommendations.

If they also generally ended up indulging in some communication of the adult-rated variety, well, that was nobody’s business other than their own, though Tilly was under no illusion that Number One hadn’t figured it out right from the start. 

Not even the thought of orgasms with someone else participating (even if it was only by listening and talking) did a lot to get her mood elevated, but every bit helped, and by the time her comm unit pinged, she was at least able to put a reasonable gloss over her less exciting mood.

Chris, of course, wasn’t fooled for a second, though he did let her moon around for a while. The third time she lost track of her very basic answer to his equally basic _So, what's new?_ was about where he arched an eyebrow and let the silence trail off.

"Sorry," Tilly sighed. "It was just, you know, a _day_." She rubbed at her temple where she could feel a migraine coming on, but she wasn't letting that happen, not on a Call Night.

"I think this is where I jump in to say that normally, you're ten layers deep into your latest fabrication problem by this point," Chris said gently. "Or you're sketching out the mathematics of the interface and how the translation between dimensions is messing with your calculations--"

Tilly groaned. "God, that sounds so--not something you'd be interested in."

"Of course I'm interested in it," Chris said. "I usually don't understand it, but I want to know."

"You are too fucking nice sometimes," Tilly said, working hard not to cry. She was usually fine with the separation (well, not _fine_ , but it was what it was, hello Starfleet, and she'd been dealing pretty okay if she did say so herself) but she would have killed for a cuddle right then. There was nothing to be done about that though, so she got herself back under control and sat up straight. "Sorry," she said, bundling her hair back out of her face. That usually made her feel more in control. She aimed a smile at Chris that she really fucking hoped looked better than it felt. "I'm fine and I know you hate dragging negative energy into--" she waved her hands around -- "us, so, yeah, it's okay."

Chris didn't say anything for long enough that Tilly's disaster siren started shrieking and the closer she looked, the louder it screamed. "What?" she asked. "Really, I'm--Everything's fine. I guess I slept like crap and … I don't know, the rest of the day followed along."

"Til," Chris sighed. "I--am such an idiot, you don't even know."

"Okay," Tilly said slowly. "I am totally lost here."

"I'm not sure who's laughing harder without knowing why right now," Chris said. "Phil or Number One." He shook his head. "If Kat were still alive she'd be in stitches."

Tilly still had no idea what was going on, but she knew that rueful half-smile and it generally wasn't something that signaled impending doom, so she arched an eyebrow and waited with at least a bit of calm.

"I know that--not wanting to drag negative energy into us--it's something I've said, more than once," Chris finally said. 

"Yes," Tilly said. "And it's not something I totally agree with, but I respect that you--"

"Oh, please don't," Chris said. "Respect it when I'm that stupid." He shook his head. "I--you were right. People in relationships can actually be in bad moods and share it and I--you know I was absolutely in denial about everything, right?"

"You were dealing with horrible things, as best you could," Tilly said, almost automatically.

"Which wasn't very well," Chris answered dryly. Tilly sighed and he held up his hands in the wordless sign for 'peace.' "My point is that I'm finding myself in the opposite position here and I--don't exactly like it."

"Whoever's laughing is _really_ going to it, then," Tilly said, "because I'm about to argue your point."

"We are a pair," Chris said.

"We are."

"I don't want you to feel like you have to hide things. We're not performing this relationship, we _are_ this relationship, for good and for bad." 

"For real," Tilly agreed. "But I totally resent this pissy damn mood I'm in for messing with our night." She frowned. "I _like_ talking with you and, you know, maybe messing around with you and this not-being-in-the-mood sucks. So, yes, I totally get not wanting to drag negative energy into us."

"Nothing says we can't still talk--or not talk and just be together," Chris pointed out, which was entirely too reasonable for Tilly's contrarian mood.

"I am aggravated about the no-sex thing, Christopher. Let's be real," Tilly sniped. "Only apparently, not aggravated enough to counteract the aggravation that's giving me this damn migraine and shittastic mood in the first place."

Chris was trying super-hard not to laugh, which was points to him, Tilly grudgingly admitted, but he was going to lose it any second now, so she waved her hand and said, "Fine, I'm completely irrational at the moment, feel free to laugh at me."

"If I was there I'd get you a cold cloth for your head and tell you to lie down for a while, so why don't you go try that." He didn't laugh, but he was smiling at her, affectionate and easy, which only made Tilly miss him more. "I'll wait," he added.

"Fine, be reasonable about it," Tilly muttered, but she went and soaked a small cloth in some ice water and got it good and cold before she wrung it out and came back into camera range and flopped down gracelessly on the couch.

"Better?" Chris asked as she got the cloth folded and draped across her forehead.

"A little," Tilly mumbled, feeling stupid. "Maybe."

Chris made a soothing sort of a sound and got one of his endless music loops playing, something low and blues-y, quiet without being boring. 

"Do you have music for everything?" Tilly asked, which sounded a little ungracious, but she actually did want to know. 

"I wouldn't be surprised," Chris said. Tilly peeked out from under the cloth to see him absently flipping through files on his PADD. After a few seconds, he looked up and saw her watching him. "Kills a good amount of time setting it up and then it's always there to fill any less-than-optimal silences."

"Very efficient," Tilly murmured, letting the cloth fall back down over her eyes. "Not that I expected anything else."

"Is it consistency or being boring?"

"'S you," Tilly answered, her words getting slurry as the coolness started penetrating and she relaxed at least a little. Chris made another one of his soothing sounds and for a while Tilly focused on her breathing and the quiet sounds of Chris taking care of the never-ending administrative work that came along with the captain's bars. Finally, without opening her eyes, she said, "If this keeps up much longer, I'm going to fall asleep and I refuse to sleep through Us time."

"Well, I'm not keen on you powering through a migraine," Chris said. 

"No, I don't feel like that either," Tilly answered. Powering through migraines often had the side effect of projectile vomiting, which she was _definitely_ not into. She considered alternate options. "So, you know the Horde--?"

"Po's mob of cousins?"

"Yeah," Tilly said, smiling because even without looking, she knew he had the I-feel-like-a-deer-in-the-headlights-but-I-am-a-Starfleet-captain-so-I-can't-show-fear look around the eyes. There really were a _lot_ of cousins, but all of Xahea was like that. It was kind of nice, except for when everybody wanted to meet you because you were 'part of the family.' _Focus_ , she told herself, and continued, "One of them has been producing documentaries on the public parklands and she sent out another one, like yesterday or the day before. We could put that on. They're all pretty low key--lots of scenic shots, soothing music." She lifted the cloth up again and slanted a glance toward the monitor. "We could maybe find the next place to visit when you finish up this tour. I mean, it's not what I'd planned for tonight, but it's probably better than listening to me snore."

"You're cute when you snore," Chris said. Tilly snorted; having had Michael Burnham, who had not been burdened with maintaining any sort of societally polite fictions, as a roommate had put the lie to that one a decade ago, but Chris was Chris, so she let it go with only that. He was smiling at her, because they'd had this discussion before, but he only said, "Scenic vistas and soothing music sound pretty good right now."

"Plus, we'll be able to tell her with actual honesty that we did watch," Tilly pointed out. "You know, when we inevitably get cornered at one dinner or another during the next Creation Day frenzy."

"There is that, too," Chris agreed. Tilly sat up enough to let the conferencing system do its retinal scan to validate getting into her storage, and then, when her head didn't explode, got herself off the couch to go find a proper pillow and some snacks. Chris was still clicking through his administrivia when she got back and got the file going, but she was half-asleep in minutes, too, so it was very companionable, the translated narration and the muted Xahean folk music in backdrop to the occasional _That could be interest--_ // _An active volcano? Seriously, Christopher?_ exchange. 

"Okay?" Chris asked as the final shot faded.

"It was nice," Tilly mumbled. "Not very exciting, though. Sorry."

"Not every encounter has to be fireworks."

"But you're so good at fireworks," Tilly said, and got the greatest exasperated eye-roll she thought she'd ever seen from Captain Best-of-Starfleet. It was a mark, she thought, of how far they'd progressed; how _real_ they were. He wasn't always projecting calm and unruffled and she wasn't halfway to freaking out about him not being happy with her. "Well, you _are_ ," she insisted, because _duh_ , but then relented. "Yeah, no, I get it; I do. This was fine; I always like hanging out with you and it was better than not seeing you at all, but I just… miss being with you and hate that I was the one that messed tonight up."

"You didn't mess anything up," Chris said, calm and steady like (almost) always. "And I promise to put some extra thought into the, uh, fireworks for next time."

He still had the best deadpan expression this side of Vulcan, but Tilly could read the amusement in his eyes even over the vid screen, and really, two could play that game.

"Mmmm," Tilly murmured. "That could work. I mean, it's never not fun, but extra thought is extra fun. Can I suggest themes--or topics of general interest? Not so much a checklist, but more like inspirational suggestions. Toys? Props? Or, no, maybe more aspirational--

"Say goodnight, Tilly," Chris said, in an ever-so-slightly choked voice, and Tilly sat up and looked straight at the camera so he'd be sure to see her winking when she answered, "Good night, Tilly."

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2266_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly knows she should clear out of the treatment area and let the team do their thing, but she can't quite make herself leave Chris' side. That's all about her; she's very clear with herself about that. He's still unconscious, like he has been for all the weeks since the accident; he isn't going to know if she's there or not. And she needs to go relay all the latest news and medical updates to everyone waiting to hear them--Phil and Number One and Pasc and… there's a whole list. That's the real sticking point, she finally acknowledges. She doesn't know what to say. Chris' numbers are slightly better, so at least he's not trending downward, but they're reacting very slowly to the treatment plan. That's not entirely unexpected; for all intents and purposes, he'd taken a lethal dose of radiation, but it's 'somewhat concerning'--direct quote from Iboye--that he's responding so slowly.

She doesn't want to have to repeat that, and then get into exactly what it means and what the prognosis is. She knows Starfleet Medical would have cut away everything diseased by now and would have been fitting what was left with cybernetics. She _knows_ how horrifying that had been to him--to see, as he put it, what was left of him and the despair in his own eyes. It had taken years for him to tell her, but the dreams never stopped circling in on him and he'd finally let her share it. She knows they've made the right call, not letting that happen, but now she knows it's only a matter of time before they'll need to have a discussion about whether to keep going or not.

So Tilly needs to get her head in the game and figure out what the answer to that is. 

She will let him go if she has to, if that's what is best for him. It will half-kill her, but she could never live with herself if she makes him go through with a life that he doesn't think is worth living, if she traps him in a useless body just so she doesn't have to go on without him. She's stronger than that. She's lived with this foreknowledge for almost a decade, planned for it, and done everything she could think of to make it better, but if she has to let him go, she _will_.

She can't quite shake the fear that she's reading too much into that persona he's always had, the one that everyone imprints on. It had taken her years to work her way behind that facade and even now, when she thinks that of course he's still there fighting, she's not sure she's actually let it all go. So she's taken to sitting in the care unit with him longer and longer, because when the night shift is in, it's quiet and almost peaceful, and she thinks she can see the place where she might begin to make sense of her worries.

There had been a big _thing_ with Po after the first week of Tilly staying half the night with Chris--because, of course, Mhika is a cousin of Kun, who leads Po's security team, so Po had insider information about how late Tilly had been staying even after Lani had gone--but they'd finally worked it out that Tilly can stay as long as she wants, but Po (by way of Kun) would take care of Tilly getting home. _Because_ , Po had said, _I *know* how hard it is to think straight after you've been sitting with someone all night_ , and Tilly had somehow managed to remember all of Po's own losses and had given in gracefully. 

There's always someone there when Tilly finally packs it in for the night, so it takes her a couple of extra seconds to process that it's not her (actually not too bad) escort waiting in the dimly lit corridor.

"Oh," Tilly says, finally noticing the Command gold of a Starfleet uniform, and not just any random command officer. "Number One--I mean, Captain--"

"Number One is fine," she says. "Especially here." She nods to the window into Chris' room. From out here, it looks sterile and lonely inside, but Tilly reminds herself that the care team is right there with him and will watch over him through the rest of the night. 

"I'm glad you're here," Tilly says, shaking herself back to the present. Number One doesn't do hugs, but she lets Tilly take her hands and gives a fucking amazing amount of support from that bit of contact. "If you want to go in with him, let me tell them it's okay--"

"As Her Serene Highness expedited my entry onto the planet in the middle of the night with a primary purpose to make sure you get home at a reasonable time--"

"Po is amazingly creative in getting her way," Tilly sighs. "Especially since she's the queen and just has to say something to have people falling all over themselves to make it happen."

"I presume she's intelligent enough not to trust those sorts," Number One says, to which Tilly can only shrug and nod in agreement. "But, I'll take you up on that offer to go in, on one condition." She waits until Tilly nods. "You sit down and start decompressing for the day. I can certainly ask questions of the medical staff; you don't need to go through the whole fiasco again."

"I--"

"Or, we can leave right now and I'll see him in the morning."

Chris has always said that nobody could drop an ultimatum like Number One, so Tilly sighs and nods and pointedly flops down on one of the chairs against the wall. Number One smiles and while she doesn't actually pat Tilly on the head, it's a very near thing, Tilly judges. 

"Mhika," Tilly says into her comm. "Captain Robbins is here and it's okay by me for her to go see Chris."

"This is going to be quick," Number One tells Tilly. 

"Take your time," Tilly says. "I know everyone is having kittens about me staying here so much, but I'm not brooding and I'm not tearing myself up. It's just--easier to think when I'm there with him." She shrugs a little helplessly. "I promise to sit and chill. I had dinner earlier, so you're not keeping me from anything. Stay as long as you want."

Number One nods and turns back to the clean room door, where Mhika is waiting to help her into an iso-suit. There's a split-second when Tilly can swear she sees her stiffening her resolve, but it really is late and Tilly's exhausted. In the next blink, she's Number One, cool and reserved, determinedly pulling on the suit and going into Chris' room proper. 

Tilly leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes, as much to give Number One a bit of privacy with Chris as much as out of pure exhaustion. She doesn't quite fall asleep, but it's close, so that she's sort of out of it when Number One comes back out, which is the only reason she has the guts to say, "It's a lot to take in, yeah?" because ordinarily, if your name isn't Pike, it's not in your best interest to imply that Number One can't handle things. (And even Chris has admitted to treading lightly.)

Then again, it really _is_ a lot to take in, seeing Chris, who's always been so incredibly alive and so involved in everyone's life, so decimated.

Number One sighs. "I was under no illusions as to the seriousness of this before I came, but yes, it is a lot to deal with." She looks at Tilly sharply. "Which is why everyone is concerned for you."

"Yeah, no, I get it." Tilly drags herself to her feet. "I mean, I was kind of hiding here tonight because I couldn't work up the energy to go talk to everyone who cares about him and wants to know what's going on and… I--" She stops for a second and breathes through all the-- _everything_. "Sometimes, it's hard to know what to say." She breathes again. "Or, really, how to say what I know needs to be said."

Tilly knows saying something like that--blurting out a problem she hasn't yet been able to work around is like lighting up the warp drive and telling Number One she has the conn--but she apparently can't help it. 

Number One doesn't say anything at first, but she gets the two of them out of the care unit and to Kun's escort before Tilly even has time to blink. Then she says, in a carefully neutral voice, "Would you rather someone else speak for you, or would you rather put out written, asynchronous updates?"

"I--uh--" Tilly knows she sounds like a timid little girl, but she guts it up and says, "I don't want it to be distant--"

"The personal interaction, having to give those updates in conversation, is exhausting and draining, even before it happens over and over and over," Number One says crisply, but not at all unkindly. It still feels like Tilly's failing everyone though. "You can designate someone to be the intermediary so that you speak with them, and them only, and they take the rest of the communication. I'm quite certain Dr. Iboye will be able to provide an intermediary, or quite possibly do it himself."

Tilly doesn't say anything, because she isn't sure she can without bursting into tears, which she doesn't intend to do now, not when she hasn't lost it during all the rest of this shitshow. Number One doesn't press her on it, only waits in a supportive silence, which is _such_ a page out of the Chris-Pike-How-To-Be-A-Good-Captain manual that Tilly ends up laughing.

"Of course it is," Number One says when Tilly explains. "You don't think he let me get away with my own personal levels of empathy without comment, do you?" 

"Super-supportive comments, I'm sure." Tilly laughs even harder, a completely unironic snorting giggle that goes a long way toward clearing her head. They're almost to her apartment now, and Number One allows her to sidestep the big question until they're inside and Tilly has thrown herself down on her couch.

"You didn't answer," Number One says in that clear, direct voice she can summon so easily, it seems. Tilly's getting there with her own voice, but it's still not at a hundred percent.

She sighs. 

Number One waits. 

Finally, Tilly says, "It feels like I'm not there for him if I let someone else do all the talking."

"This next part is straight out of that Pike handbook, too," Number One says. "What do you think his reaction to that would be?"

Tilly groans. "Oh, god, you're so right. I can almost hear him saying it."

"And your answer?"

"You _know_ what he'd say to that," Tilly says.

"I do," Number One agrees. "So do you."

"Yeah." Tilly considers how best to say the next part, but finally just says, "The thing is, it's not his call, not at this point in time. It's something _I_ feel."

"No, it's not his decision to make," Number One says. "But we both know he would be very strongly against your tearing yourself up over something like this." She makes a very un-Number One face. "Also, the I-am-very-surprised-and-incredibly-disappointed-you-let-this-happen face I'll be stuck seeing every time I talk to him doesn't bear thinking about."

Tilly sees what Number One's done there, implying that there's no 'if' about whether she'll be talking to Chris, only the when. She's not even trying to be subtle about the support, it's just blatant, willful non-acknowledgement of the possibilities, which is so totally not how Number One usually operates. Tilly probably should feel like she's being babied, but instead, it's like at least some of the weight she's been carrying eases up.

"That's not actually it, though," Tilly hears herself saying. Number One focuses her attention on Tilly, which Tilly's brain interprets as all-ahead-full. "I can deal with talking to everyone, but I don't know if I'm not kidding myself about how long Chris is going to want to fight this and end up putting him through--" she breathes deep. "Awful things," she pushes the words out, "just because I thought wrong." 

Number One sits at the other end of the couch and reaches out to take Tilly's hand. "I don't know the answer to that," she finally says. "I don't. But I've never seen him give up, not once, no matter how bleak the situation might have been, and Tilly, there were one or two times when it was _bad_."

"This is bad, too," Tilly says, holding onto Number One's hand like it's a lifeline. "I know half the team didn't expect him to still be alive when we got there, and he's responding, but more slowly than they like, and--" 

She really can't finish that, but Number One knows exactly what it is that she can't say; Tilly can see it in her eyes, which means Number One is letting her see things that almost never get shared. Tilly squeezes her hand, _hard_ , and they sit together, with only the muted sounds from the streets below filling the silence.

"One thing I want you to remember," Number One finally says, "is that I don't know anyone who knows Chris better than you--anyone he's _allowed_ to know him better." She squeezes Tilly's hand again. "I'm inclined to think that if you believe it, it's as close to true as any of us are going to get."

It still leaves Tilly more-or-less alone with the decision, but it does make her feel like she's got a more solid foundation.

Number One nods once, and then looks around the room. "This is very Chris," she says, which Tilly can't argue with. Stuff from their last trip is piled in the corner and every single one of his non-uniform boots are scattered around. And that's not even being able to see the blanket from his last ready room that Tilly's been sleeping under and all the stuff in the kitchen that she's mostly ignoring.

"We were super-lazy the week before he left to go back on-duty," Tilly says. "And then, it--all happened and I haven't had the energy to deal with any of it."

"No, I only meant that he really did make this his home, his base," Number One says.

"Yeah," Tilly answers, looking at the holo-cube and the picture of the two of them sitting on the balcony watching the sky rockets for last year's Creation Day celebrations, the remains of the feast Chris had cooked up still around them. They'd made it through all the rest of the celebrations but had huddled at home together for the finale. "He did."

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2262_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly could admit that she wasn't at the top of her game, but coming in the door to her own apartment and nearly finding herself flat on her face as she tripped over something laying in the middle of the floor seemed a bit excessive. In her favor, she would swear that whatever-it-was hadn't been there when she'd left (two--or possibly three, she really wasn't sure--days earlier) and she _knew_ she was the only person who was supposed to be there. The adrenaline hitting her already way-stressed system left her shaking, but she somehow managed not to face-plant, and then found enough of her brain to notice that it was a familiar-looking Fleet duffel.

"Chris?" she called, which was kind of stupid, because who else was it going to be? Also, she hated that shrill edge her voice could take on, but there probably wasn't any fighting that, at least not right then.

"In here," he answered from the kitchen. Tilly didn't even bother dropping her messenger bag before she whipped around the corner and basically grabbed him. It was, she could admit, a bit much, but it had been a long, _incredibly_ stressful, three days, and there wasn't anyone else in the galaxy she'd rather be with. Fortunately, even though she'd kind of calmed down around him over the years (there for awhile she was literally throwing herself at him every time he got back on the planet), he was also more-or-less prepared for all of her crashing into him and let her walk right into his arms. 

It was nice.

Also, there were kisses, which were strongly beyond nice.

"You're supposed to be on Risa, celebrating Number One's new command," Tilly finally said once she'd caught her breath. "But holy crap am I glad you're here."

"You're supposed to be having a normal week," Chris answered, letting her clutch onto him like there was nothing he'd rather be doing than holding her up from what was basically a panic attack. "Which definitely doesn't include being so upset you're shaking."

"I tripped," Tilly said, which was true enough. "Adrenaline rush."

"Not to be insulting, sweetheart, but I've seen you trip a time or two," Chris said, rubbing her back. "It usually doesn't leave you shaking like a leaf." Tilly sighed. "Or looking like you haven't slept in a week."

"Stupid pale skin," Tilly mumbled, because, yes, she had seen herself in a mirror, and yes, she did have circles under her eyes dark enough to be paint. Chris hummed something soothing and kept on rubbing her back and she finally said, "It's been a long couple of days, but I swear I'm not all that bad off."

It was, in all actuality, true. Almost. It was a lot better having Chris here, even if she was going to have to explain everything and that was going to be pretty shitty. It was less shitty, than being alone like she'd thought she was going to be, so she definitely was going to take it. She tipped her head back to look up at him, and he dropped a kiss on her forehead. 

"I really am glad you're here, but, seriously, why?"

"Plans changed," Chris said. He was trying for that easy, laid-back tone that he had--and he was close--but Tilly _heard_ him trying, and narrowed her eyes at him. He smiled at her and added, "No, they actually did change, and I'm not that bad off either." She took a deep breath but before she could say anything, he said (in a much more normal-sounding voice), "Okay, deal: you go take a shower; I'll get food set up and we'll get through everything. Promise."

"I'd totally do that," Tilly said. "Except the replicator's broken. And it's too late for the markets."

"Lucky for us, I brought food from the resort."

"Oh, that's---you're amazing," Tilly said. "Because all I have is the remains of a very sad veggie wrap. I'd totally share, but…"

"I've yet to investigate what the hotel packed up for me, but I'm fairly certain it beats your offer." Chris said, dropping another kiss, this time on her hair. "But I'd still be happy enough being here even if that was all we had."

"You're very sweet," Tilly told him, going up on her toes so she could reach his mouth to get in a kiss of her own. "I'll go try to revive myself and we can continue this conversation with actual food." She stopped halfway out of the room and said, "By the way, that was directed as much to me as it was to you, so please don't think I'm trying to deflect away from all of -- this." She gestured to her crumpled clothes and flyaway hair, and yes, the ghostlike complexion she was sporting (though, for real, it didn't take much to wash her out, he should know that by now.)

"So noted," Chris said, and Tilly went staggering off to the shower, which did actually help. She was still exhausted and really, really emotionally overwhelmed, but getting clean took enough of the edge off of her not-being-able-to-deal, at least not without a shitload of tears. She wrapped her hair up to jumpstart the hours-long drying process and found a clean shirt and pair of leggings. (The fact that the shirt was one of Chris' Enterprise workout shirts was a nice bonus, but not nearly as nice as having Chris himself there with her.)

"Okay," Tilly said, walking back out to the main room. "Food. Because I'm actually hungry enough to eat that sad wrap I dragged home."

"Good timing," Chris answered from the couch. There was an entire table full of carryout hot/cold boxes, fancy enough to have come from the palace, in front of him and even a couple of bottles chilling on the floor. "There's a list around here some--"

"I'm good," Tilly said, dropping down onto the couch next to him and rifling through the containers. "It's not like I'm going to say no to anything at this point."

Chris might have winced at a few of her combinations, but it wasn't as if he'd never seen her eat a peanut butter, mayo and lettuce sandwich before so he didn't actually say anything. It was all good and Tilly was happy to see that Chris was eating, too. Whatever had brought him halfway back across the galaxy wasn't so bad that he wasn't taking care of himself. And yes, she was ignoring everything on her end, but she wasn't going to do that indefinitely. For right that second, though, food and random conversation (Number One knew how to organize a party, so Chris had enough story-telling material to carry the conversation while Tilly ate her way through, well, everything) were at least an on-ramp to the serious stuff still waiting.

"Okay," Tilly finally said. "Have I mentioned how glad I am to see you?"

"Me or the food?" Chris asked dryly, but he leaned back and let her settle herself with her head pillowed on his thigh. He dropped his hand down to stroke through her hair and Tilly felt her breath shudder out of her.

"You," she murmured. "So much you."

"You might have had a bit to do with me wanting to be here, too," Chris said. He didn't stop moving his hand through her hair. "More than a bit, actually."

The silence stretched out, but it was the calm quiet of a pool of water. Easy and still, and no way to know how deep merely by looking. 

"Tell me why you're here," Tilly finally said. "Instead of celebrating with Number One."

"Celebrations were--celebrated," Chris said. "I bought multiple rounds of drinks, made all appropriate--and a few borderline inappropriate--toasts, and generally behaved as is expected when your long-time first officer gets a well-deserved promotion and an excellent new command. It was a hell of a party and I was happy to be there."

He stopped talking, but still kept twisting her hair around his fingers. Tilly gave him a few minutes, but when he kept not saying anything, prompted him.

"And then you were going to decompress for a week before you have to go back to Command for all of _your_ well-deserved celebrations." Tilly knew there were a _lot_ of mixed feelings flying around both of the promotions--turning the _Enterprise_ over to a new command was a big thing for everyone, even Spock and the rest of the crew who weren't leaving the ship. The whole point of Risa had been to provide a neutral setting to background the start of the change.

"That was the plan, but then I looked around and realized I didn't give a damn about picturesque vistas, and home felt like a good place to be."

Tilly wasn't at all ashamed to note that _that_ choked her up.

"I'm glad this is home and a good place," she managed to say. Chris tugged gently on her hair, a tiny reminder that he knew--and shared--a lot of her pride and happiness that those things went together--that they had worked hard to make that happen. "But I have to ask… Are you sure?" Tilly waved her hand out at the craziness of the apartment, the small rooms filled with all of her bits and pieces and the general conglomeration of lives in process, especially when one of the inhabitants wasn’t exactly a minimalist. She loved it and it was home, even in a way that _Discovery_ hadn't been, but it definitely had its limitations. "I mean, this isn't exactly a five-star resort even when the replicator is working."

"I'm sure. And you know I'm fine without a replicator."

"Well, yeah, but I mean, it's really not-working not-working. Like, you're going to have to go over to that one market on the other side of the city to get anything you can even use as basic ingredients. You should have commed--I could have put an order in and--"

"Til," he said. "It's fine. I'll go over to the market tomorrow while you're at the lab."

"Okay," she said, because while he was being nice and letting her keep the subject off of _her_ issues, there was only so much she could let herself get away with. Dropping the mostly pointless subject was the least she could do. 

"Risa is… everything they say it is," Chris said. "But, it doesn't have much connection to my actual life and it felt wrong to be gearing up for something so big someplace so disconnected to my reality. So, here I am."

"Okay," Tilly repeated. "I'm not ever going to turn down more time with you."

It was her turn to talk, Tilly knew, but Chris still didn't say anything--didn't ask any questions, didn't press her for explanations--just sat with her and stroked her hair, until she could finally find it in her to say, "We had new patients this week. A couple of days ago. Fabrication accident." She took a couple of steadying breaths, because she absolutely didn't want to break down here. It wasn't going to help. "That was the kicker, you know? Fabrication accidents usually mean here, on-planet. So, I wasn't--expecting one of the people we admitted to be--human."

Tilly reached up blindly and Chris let her take his hand. It meant he wasn't combing his fingers through her hair, but the skin-to-skin contact was better, even if she couldn't quite make herself turn her head enough to meet his eyes.

"It was harder than I thought it would be," she said. 

Chris laced his fingers through hers, still not saying anything, and Tilly forcibly restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Sometimes, it was really apparent that you could take the captain off their ship, but you couldn't ever take the captain out of the person. If he was any more let-me-keep-my-personal-issues-out-of-this-and-be-supportive, he was going to have a stroke. "You can have a reaction to that, you know."

"I'm having a lot of reactions," Chris said, not exactly lightly--which Tilly would have called him out on right away--but with a bit of rueful humor that did a lot to ease the moment, which she was sure he knew. Since he wasn't pretending everything was totally fine, though, she was going to give him a break about it. "But I'll hold onto them until you're done."

Tilly squeezed his hand and considered her words. It _had_ been harder to see the near-term effects of radiation on a human body. That was the truth, and it was what she'd said to the empath team that worked with the care teams. It wasn't the whole truth, but no one but Chris would understand all of what she wasn't saying. She'd thought she was going to have time to get herself pulled together before he was due back on Xahea, but sometimes life had other ideas. 

"I mean, it wasn't a thing while we were actually working on her--we were too busy adjusting the mycelial concentrations and timings, and holy crap, but Lani's human-expert doctor is _something_. I didn't really have time to think about anything but what was right in front of me."

"And then you did have time to think," Chris said.

"Yeah, and it was--a lot." Tilly rolled over onto her back so she could actually look at him, see his face, his eyes. 

"I don't suppose it would do any good if I asked you to step back, give yourself a little bit of a break?"

"No, it would not," Tilly said, managing an even tone despite the sudden surge of fury his words brought down on her. _Breathe_ , she told herself. _Breathe; he doesn't mean it that way, you know he doesn't. And you're on edge, so breathe, dammit._ "My team designed and built that interface chamber. _My_ team. We are the ones who modify it based on clinical input and every time we learn something more, we make it so the next patient has better odds, whether I personally know that theoretical patient or not."

"I didn't me--"

"I know," Tilly said, still not dropping her guard. "I do--it's the only reason I'm still here." She lifted their hands, where they were still holding onto each other. "But that's the underlying, residual feeling I'm left with."

"I'm sorry," Chris said. "I hate that I tangled you up in this--"

"You know," Tilly said, letting go of all the residual anger that wasn't even about him. _Thanks, Mom_. "If it makes you feel any better, I would have gotten involved with this even if I didn't know anything about what the crystal showed you." She brought his hand up so she could drop a quick kiss on it. "I mean, if you still want to blame yourself, you can start with that crazy idea to park _Discovery_ in the mycelial plane to come get me, but since you did get me out of that place, I'm not going to be super-upset about it."

"Point taken," Chris said, and Tilly thought he might even mean it. Or, well, he was trying to mean it even if that ridiculously high standard he held himself (and only himself) to wasn't quite there yet even after years of trying. 

"Have you told anyone?" Chris asked, which was not at all what she was expecting to hear. He didn't say anything more, but then he didn't have to. 

"It's not my thing to tell," Tilly answered. That was another truth that wasn't everything that was going on, but the rest of it was that she'd seen too many weird time issues to fully trust that this one was the one that was going to play out exactly as shown. Chris worried that she was kidding herself--which was not an invalid thought, Tilly acknowledged--but she rationally couldn't let go of that option. Talking about it really fucking stressed him out, though, and it wasn't like he was letting it take over his life in a bad way, like he had for awhile, so she kept those thoughts to herself and went on with her life.

"Would you object if I did?"

Tilly sat up at that, twisting around so she could get her hands on his face. 

"I am not asking you to do that," she said. 

"I know you're not," Chris said, and even after years and years, Tilly found it impossible to look away from his eyes. She knew that look, one that wasn't so much stubborn as it was determined, and there wasn't much in the galaxy that could stand in the way of a determined Christopher Pike. Finally, she sighed, and tipped her head forward so she could rest her forehead against his.

"It's your thing, to tell or not, but do not do it because you think I need you to."

"It's more like I think I need me to do it," Chris said. "Not only because it was unfair of me to saddle you with that--" 

Tilly didn't even try to not grind her teeth, but that wasn't anything new, so she took a deep breath and let him go on.

"But because it's not something I want to keep separate from the rest of my life." He was quiet for a few seconds, but Tilly could tell there was more so she didn't push. "I know you're not convinced everything will play out the way the crystal showed me, but…"

"I know," Tilly said. She did know he couldn't do that, that the only way he'd been able to make it so the vision didn't sink his ability to live his life was to accept that it was true and go on regardless.

"I took the deal. All of it," Chris said. "We needed that crystal and I got it. And I know I didn't deal well with it for a long time, but even then, that was all there was to consider. Me. Now that's not true, and you're not the only person involved."

"Okay," Tilly whispered. "Whatever you need from me, you know you have it."

"I do," Chris answered, threading his hands through her hair and tipping her head back so he could kiss her. "Knowing that has made knowing the rest of it bearable."

Tilly blinked back the tears that were threatening, because this wasn't about her and she didn't want to be a distraction from whatever else he needed to say.

"And somehow," he sighed, adding another kiss in for good measure, "in the middle of a Starfleet career and all that that entails, and everything that's spun out of that career, I find myself here, with you and a place of our own, and even more unbelievably for an only child, part of a giant extended family. Accepting the bargain I made is one thing; keeping it from beings who've opened their lives to me is something else."

Not that Tilly was going to argue with him in the first place, but his this-is-the-right-thing tone had definitely not wavered over the years. For a couple of seconds, she was an ensign back on _Discovery_ , mouth agog as the unknown quantity who'd taken over the ship went toe-to-toe with one being after another who'd failed to live up to his expectations. Of course, that captain never would have looked twice at Ensign Sylvia Tilly, so she blinked herself back to the present and the resolute determination in his eyes.

"I'm not going to tell you no," she said. 

"You know I'll admit to there being days when I think you should," Chris answered. "But this isn't one of them."

"Also not saying no to that." Tilly took a deep breath. "Tell me what I can do to help." 

"Since I only pulled all of that together in my head a few seconds ago, when I work out what I want to do, I'll let you know." His mouth quirked up into a rueful half-smile, one of the ones that Tilly literally couldn't resist kissing. He let her keep it light and easy, but she knew she could turn it into something more serious whenever she wanted. Which, she did--of course--but it didn't seem like quite the time to sidetrack them, no matter how excellent the sex would be. Besides, a flurry of small kisses were a good enough start to anything that might end up spinning out during the rest of the night.

"I've no idea how I'm supposed to do this," Chris said, like he was confessing the most shameful thing in the world. 

"I think you just say it," Tilly said. 

"I'm guessing Po would be the place to start."

"She was with us there at the end with Control. And she barely blinked when the suit bounced me back here. She knows from weird."

"Still," Chris sighed.

"Yeah." Tilly slipped under his arm so she could press close. "If it helps, once they get past the crappy news, Po and Llani will be… I don't know… honored that you consider them close enough to share this with. Like you're acknowledging that you think of them as family, which is the exact reason why you told me you needed to tell them." She tipped her head back to look up at him. "And you know how Xaheans feel about family."

"I do," Chris sighed. "It's not that I mind Po thinking that, it's everything that is bound to follow along." 

"Oh, yeah, the Horde is dying to welcome you," Tilly teased gently and was rewarded with a half-laugh, half-groan. "It's your own fault, you know. Half of it's because you let K'iania talk for an hour about her documentaries. She hasn't stopped gushing about you since. You're basically too charming for your own good."

It was a little whiplashy, joking so soon after having A Crystal Talk, but Tilly wasn't going to give up anything that broke all of that tension. 

"I don't know why it is that while neither of us has any real family to speak of, you, the quintessential science officer, who are usually happiest locked up in a lab somewhere, are the one that isn't overwhelmed by that mob."

Tilly started to joke back, but then reconsidered. "I always wanted that, a giant family that wants to know everything and offer opinions that aren't emotional blackmail and--" She stopped for a few seconds because her mother had already come galloping out across her emotions once this night and she really didn't need a replay. "I just had to go halfway across the galaxy for it."

"But you found it," Chris said, and Tilly sighed. 

"And dragged you into it, too, sorry."

"Well, I don't suppose it's the worst thing in the world," Chris said, sounding mystified enough that Tilly couldn't resist letting her fingers skip over to where he was--allegedly--the tiniest bit ticklish. He was too fast for her though--test pilot reflexes even after all the years--so she mostly ended up draped across his lap with him holding all the leverage, which was probably a better place to be anyway. The possibilities of what might happen next were pretty much endless--and all good.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2266_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly's as prepared as she can be for the day they decide to bring Chris out of sedation and start the next part of the healing process. It comes sooner than she hoped, but later than she'd feared, which is about on par for everything about the whole horrible situation.

Pasc is there with her while she's working her way down her list of questions for the care team. He's been there almost every day, which Tilly appreciates more than she can say. Po's there a lot, too, of course, but, well, she's not the most restful person to have around. That's hardly a surprise, and Tilly certainly hasn't turned down _any_ support, but she'll take a page out of Chris' book/belief system and say that someone is looking out for them, because she doesn't even have to figure out how to tactfully communicate that (being real, tact still isn't one of Tilly's strengths) because the fact that the queen is around unnerves the shit out of the care team, and Po is very, very aware of that. So she dodges in and out, dropping hugs and crazy attempts at Tilly's favorites from the palace chefs, and then disappearing before she disrupts the smooth routine of the care unit.

Pasc somehow has this knack of putting everyone at ease, so that even though he's basically the equivalent of an archduke--and, as far as Tilly can tell, at least until Po starts having kids, next in line for the throne--he's very good at making people forget that until he wants them to remember it. Chris has always said he's the consummate diplomat--in all the best connotations of the word--and Tilly guesses she's fallen into his way of seeing what he wants her to see, because she doesn't see the position either, only Chris' friend, the one that's the conduit to Chris have a group closer to his age and experience amid all of Tilly's mesh of youngish science and engineering nerds.

The main issue with having to lift the coma is that it effectively drops a hard stop on how much regeneration and healing the mycelial washes can help Chris' body do. Tilly gets that there's only so long they can keep him sedated and she trusts Iboye when he says that they've reached the "adverse limit," but she's been hoping for more. She does make the case for one last session, before they start easing off on the sedatives, but once that's done, she can see where everyone is drawing the line under the mycelia. 

"We're maybe close enough that his bones can heal enough for bio-braces to let him walk--especially with the team Po's funded over the years doing the design work," Tilly tells Pasc, who's listening patiently even though she's pretty sure she's said all this to him before. "I wish we could have gotten a few more sessions, but…"

"It is as it is," Pasc reminds her. "We'll continue to work with what's in front of us, but remember how far we've come."

"True," Tilly agrees. Getting even this far is something that hadn't been remotely guaranteed. She manages to tell Pasc that, but then there's a flurry of activity and Tilly's whisked away to get into her iso-suit so she can be with Chris as he's eased out of the coma. It's standard procedure to have someone there with the patient; Tilly's used to it from the care team side of the equation, but it's still halfway to overwhelming to be able to smile at him as his eyes start focusing. 

Tilly's still not sure he understands what's going on, or even recognizes her, but then at the end of that incredibly long, stressful day, when she's trying to leave (because soon enough, she's going to be there as much as possible and everyone insists on her getting rest now), every time she steps out of his sight, his vitals all crater, which sends the entire care team into a controlled frenzy, especially the first time, before they figure out that it correlates to Tilly leaving. 

Pasc is the one that solves that problem, merely by leaning in so Chris can see that it's him in the iso suit and saying, "Tilly will stay with the family, Christopher. I'll take her myself." 

On the one hand, Tilly can feel the stress dropping off her as all of Chris' readings ease back into the good zones. On the other, it's a little galling that even half-dead, Chris is getting all wound up about Tilly being alone. There's nothing quite like having your partner broadcast to all and sundry that he's not sure you can take care of yourself.

On the other-other hand, though, Tilly can acknowledge that it's not that Chris is saying she's incapable, it's that, stripped down to his most basic, he takes care of people and it's not his fault she's tripping over baggage she's still dragging with her, stuff that doesn't have anything to do with him. _And_ , she can also admit that Pasc is approximately the same as Chris when it comes to the caretaking thing, so it's not at all surprising that he figured it all out while the rest of them were running around like the proverbial headless chickens. 

All of which circles Tilly right back around to it being a good thing that Chris is settling in and she really doesn't care how it happens. 

"My cousin insists you spend the night with her," Pasc says, using the informal grammar that Xaheans of his class use only with family. "We can stop by your home if you need anything."

"I'm fine," Tilly sighs as they walk out of the medical center. "I know I've got stuff at Po's so we can go straight there, because I know you're not going to _your_ place until I'm settled."

"I would not break my word to a friend," Pasc says, sounding apologetic about it, so maybe it's not only that Tilly has baggage, but that it's actually a little over-the-top to an outsider, too.

"No, it's fine," Tilly says. "You can go in tomorrow and tell him and it'll keep him reassured and that's the important thing."

Pasc smiles and then spends the rest of the trip to the palace grounds asking Tilly how she's sleeping, what she's been eating, and assorted other borderline nosy questions. 

" _Bye_ , Pasc," Tilly says as they're waved into the compound, only half-joking about the aggravation. Kun's right there to take her up to Po's suite, where the real interrogation will begin, but Tilly's pretty sure it'll come with snacks and possibly a masseuse, so she's going to basically count her blessings. Plus, she figures if she lets herself look as tired as she feels, Po will feel guilty and dump all the questions and just shove Tilly off to one of the spare bedrooms. 

It all happens more-or-less like Tilly expects, but then the next morning, when she's waiting for someone from Kun's team to free up to take her back to the hospital, she really doesn't expect Pasc to be there again.

"I know Po probably set you up for this," Tilly says, "but you don't have to ferry me around. I'll be fine."

"My cousin and I did speak last night, but I would be here regardless," Pasc says. "I would not leave the bond-partner of my friend--"

Tilly opens her mouth to point out that she and Chris aren't officially official (as Po would term it) but he smiles and shakes his head.

"No," he says, "I understand, but you of all off-worlders know that our ways are very unstructured for something such as this. Even my cousin only had blessings as a ceremony when she and her partner chose to make their relationship formal." He's not wrong, so Tilly lets him finish up. "I would not leave you to carry on alone, not unless you wish to be that way."

"No," Tilly says. "It's nice having you here; I was only checking to make sure I wasn't keeping you from the rest of your life."

"This is the most important thing; surely, you have learned that much about Xahea in your time here."

His sincerity catches Tilly hard and it takes her a few seconds to get to someplace where she can answer with any kind of composure, even if she's not particularly articulate in expressing her thanks. 

He's there the next day, and the next, and the one after that, when Chris insists on Iboye continuing the mycelial washes, no matter that they can't put him under again and the mycelia will be literally eating away at his body. 

"I'll take the trade-off," Chris says when Iboye puts his love of dramatics to good use and graphically describes what the mycelia do on a cellular level and how the remaining nerves react. He also can't deny that it _will_ continue to help--damn Chris' captain's instinct for knowing exactly how to dig out the information he wants to hear--and that every session sets up more and more opportunities for regrowth and recovery. Even with Chris' face still scarred and the nerves not yet healed so that his expressions are blurred and not quite formed, Tilly recognizes the sheer bloody-minded _determination_ she knows so well.

"This scares the shit out of me," Tilly tells him once they're alone. 

Chris moves his head in a slight, shallow nod. "Me too," he slurs, but Tilly knows the decision has already been made. 

"I really don't want you to do this," Tilly says, reasoning that blunt is the way to go. 

"Sorry," Chris says, so softly it's barely more than an exhaled breath. "Sorry."

"No, it's your decision." Tilly wishes she could touch him, wishes she didn't still have to be in the iso-suit, but if they're letting the mycelia strip off layers of him, they can't risk any kind of infection. "I'm not even sure why I'm surprised it's happening."

"Stubborn," Chris mouths, almost out of energy from just the talking, and Tilly nods. 

"So _fucking_ stubborn." She blows him a kiss and sits with him until he falls asleep.

Iboye thinks it'll only be the one time, and Tilly would like to believe that, but she knows down deep that it's going to drag on and on and on.

She's not wrong. 

Day after day, she sits and watches over him as they make the connection to the mycelial plane and depressurize the interface chamber so that the spores rush in and start breaking down the scar tissue and radiation poisoning. The active portion, where the spores are actually in contact with the patient only lasts for the briefest of time--they can calibrate the interface down to microseconds--but the aftereffects last as long as the nerves in the affected tissues keep firing. Longer, even, as the synapses in the brain keep relaying the message, like the phantom pain from an amputation. 

Chris is usually still rigid from pain hours after every session, but every single morning, Tilly walks back up to him and knows they're doing it again that day. Objectively speaking, his numbers are looking better and better, but Tilly sees how the pain is cutting deeper and deeper lines around his eyes and mouth, how little he speaks even with the nerve regeneration, how dull his eyes are no matter when she looks. 

He tells her she doesn't need to be there every day, but she hasn't missed one yet and she's not about to start now. 

"You don't have to talk to me," she tells him, "or even acknowledge that I'm here, but I will be."

He sighs and turns his face away from her, but he doesn't bring the subject up again, and he always seems like he's waiting for her no matter how early she gets there. 

And she's getting to the floor earlier and earlier because she's sleeping worse than ever, jolting awake in the pre-dawn darkness, unable to remember the dreams that come night after night, but always feeling the dread they leave in their wake. Once she's awake, there's no going back to sleep, so she drags herself off to the university so that she can at least sit with Chris while they're both not sleeping.

It grinds on, day after day, until one day Tilly looks around and realizes that no one is going to tell Chris no. Iboye has gotten sucked into the Pike Effect, and is completely dazed at how long Chris has kept going with the incredible levels of pain, and Lani, while clearly as troubled as Tilly _by_ those levels, will not go against the patient's wishes. Po has big, big issues about telling anyone to do anything, so even without the Lani connection, she's not going to be able to help out much. Number One and Spock and Phil Boyce are on the other side of the galaxy.

That leaves Tilly to fix this mess before Chris literally drives himself into a never-ending dissociative state trying to make the whole situation go away. 

Pasc is there when Tilly is gearing herself up to go have the Talk with Chris; she tells him what she's planning, not so much for validation but because she thinks he's worried, too. It turns out that he'd been trying to figure out how to talk with her about that very thing himself, so Tilly is even more determined than ever. 

"I can understand Christopher's determination," Pasc tells her, "but I fear he has lost his sense of balance. I confess I could see myself doing the same." 

Tilly nods and then goes to pull on her iso-suit again. Chris is dozing when she makes her way over to him, so she sits quietly and lets her mind go as still and calm as she can, focusing on her breathing and letting her heart settle, too. When she opens her eyes, Chris is watching her--or, more truthfully, his eyes are turned to her but she honestly can't see much life at all in them. They're dull and flat, no curiosity or liveliness or anything that makes Chris _Chris_ in them at all. It stiffens her resolve even further.

"Hi," she whispers. He blinks up at her, meeting her gaze for a split second, but then goes away again, somewhere deep inside his head.

"Please stop this," Tilly says. "Please."

It seemingly takes Chris a long few seconds to sort through her words; he finally frowns at her and visibly gathers himself to argue.

Tilly knows him, though, and counters as many of the points she's thought through before he even says them. 

"I know your scans are continuing to show improvement, but they're flattening out and every time you put yourself through another wash, the pain is driving your psych profile lower. They're canceling each other out, or close to it."

"Still seeing gains," Chris grits out.

"Yes, but they're looking like an asymptotic plot," Tilly answers. "I could come up with some old, outdated reference, one of the ones that always makes you smile when I try for it, like, I don't know, _half the distance to the goal line_ , except there's nothing funny about this situation and I can't make myself be cheery and chirpy."

"Don't know for sure." His voice sounds awful and he's almost breaking out in a cold sweat from forcing his lungs and throat to work hard enough to speak, but that's Tilly's entire point.

"I--okay, yes, we don't know for sure. We're in uncharted territory," Tilly sighs, "because, surprise, no one has actually ever done what you're doing, and I'm not sure that we'll ever reach a point when they're not, technically, improving, but every day it's less and less."

Chris doesn't have anything to say to that and Tilly presses on. 

"And what you're losing on the neurological side is compounding every day. This whole program was designed holistically--once you stop letting the mycelia break down the poisoned tissues, the next part of the program starts to build up the healthy, new ones. That's not happening with you, because you're in so much pain we're still at the stage of pumping oxygen into your environment so your lungs can work at a quarter-efficiency just so you're not dancing around going into shock with every breath." 

Chris closes his eyes, but he doesn't turn away from her. Tilly lets the silence draw out while his breathing settles and he maybe dozes off. He's barely sleeping because he's always in pain so every tiny cat nap helps; Tilly waits until he blinks back awake and his eyes find her. She doesn't try to hide anything from him, not her fear or her love or her determination. For the first time in more than a week, he's really and truly looking at her, and, not that it's any kind of a surprise, she's struck by exactly how much he means to her, enough that she's not going to back down even if he never wants to be with her again.

"Please trust me," Tilly finally says. "I know everyone has been telling you these things, every day, but please _trust me_ , and stop this so we can go on to the next step."

He hesitates for long enough that Tilly is mentally bracing herself for the continued argument, but then he says, "Do trust you," and all the air rushes out of her lungs.

"Can I tell them you're ready to move to the next phase?" she says when she's sure she can keep her voice steady.

"Feels like," Chris starts to say, but then has to stop and breathe carefully. Tilly digs her fingers into her palms to keep her hands from reaching for him. "Giving up," he finishes.

"No," Tilly says, keeping it simple and direct. "Not hardly." She smiles at him, even though she'd basically like to cry. "Oh, no," she says, seeing the argument he can't help trying to make stamped across his face. "Nope, you already told me you trust me--it applies here, too."

He doesn't smile, not exactly, but his eyes carry a faint cast of what Tilly remembers they look like when he does, and frankly, after all of this, she will take anything she can get.

"Trust you," Chris repeats, so softly Tilly has to lean near to make out the words. "We c'n stop."

"Okay," Tilly breathes, hardly daring to believe she's heard him correctly. "Okay--I'll--you rest and, and--I'll--we'll start the--" She turns her head and catches Lani's eye where she's standing on the other side of the observation window and nodding quickly, before letting her focus snap back to Chris. "Breathe, baby," she murmurs. "Just breathe."

He moves his head fractionally, a tiny nod that at least tells Tilly he's still there with her, with the world, and she returns the gesture with as much love as she can pack into it. She can't touch him, but she can be _there_ and make sure he knows he's not alone. 

The care team floods around them, adjusting the familiar routine to take into account Chris being conscious, and all of them, every one, stops to make sure Chris and Tilly are okay. Tilly drinks in the care and love and can see Chris accepting it, too. Starfleet Medical would have treated him well, she truly believes that, but they'd have been at a remove. He'd have been Captain Pike to them, that pretty, glossy facade. They'd have taken care of him, but they wouldn't have seen _him_ , like they do here.

It takes another week before Chris' body heals enough that they can move him out of the isolation unit. He sleeps through most of the wait, which is almost perfect. His body is desperate for the rest, and it lets his brain throttle back down after the overstimulation of having to process everything the mycelial breakdowns caused. Plus, Tilly realizes, _everyone_ drinks it in, the care team, Tilly herself, and everyone who's been there for her. Even knowing how draining it had been to be the person responsible for relaying all the uncertain news, she's shocked at how _nice_ it is to be able to say nothing more than _sleeping naturally_ day after day after day. 

The last few days, Chris is awake more and more, and not only awake, but taking interest in his surroundings, interacting with the care team and asking Tilly about them so he can know more about them. It's so very Chris--the captain who made every effort to know the _Discovery_ crew even when they'd all assumed he'd only be a short-timer--that Tilly gets choked up the first few times. 

"It's like it's really and truly Chris still," she says to Phil Boyce on their nightly (her night; she actually has no idea what time it is for him) check-in calls. "He's barely awake for any time but he doesn't want to not know who's around him."

"Sounds like Chris," Phil agrees. "Good to know we haven't lost that part of him."

"Yeah," Tilly sighs. "More than I even expected."

She accidentally oversleeps the morning they move him to his official recovery suite, so by the time she gets to the medical center, he's already settled in. 

At least theoretically.

"Sorry," Tilly gasps as she finally clears the decontam cycle and dashes into the new room. It's open and spacious with a large window that faces out over the university grounds, lush with the wildly colored Xahean flowers and trees and the waterfall masking the front of the tower beyond. The walls are painted a soothing pale blue and the style of the furniture is clean and graceful. Lani has an entire team that lays out the recovery suites to provide a healing environment, whatever that might feel like to the patient occupying them. 

Calm serenity is the goal, but Tilly barely even gets her first breath in before she's hit with the tension and strain that's basically flooding the room. She almost flinches as her brain shrieks _NOWWHATNOWWHATNOWWHAT?_.

"There," Mhika is saying with a suspiciously even tone and a smile that's more like a grimace. "Tilly is here, Captain; now will you please take your rest?"

Tilly slams her doom-seeking brain down and manages a deep, somewhat calming breath as she looks between the two of them. Chris is (not unexpectedly) in bed, while Mhika is in the middle of the room and looks like she's been pacing. Tilly sighs, and then says to Chris, "You're already annoying _Mhika_ , who is the calmest person I've ever met?"

Chris is stubbornly looking out the window; Tilly rolls her eyes and goes to give Mhika a hug. "I told you he was a pain, right?"

Mhika hugs her back, saying only, "He has his first therapy this afternoon," and then leaves. 

"Seriously?" Tilly says, turning back to Chris and shaking her head. 

"I am tired of sleeping," Chris says, not quite petulantly. His voice is ragged and his muscles aren't quite synching with what his brain is sending, so his enunciation is off, but it's totally him in tone and expression, so Tilly doesn't much care.

"Yeah, well--"

"I know," Chris mutters, grudgingly agreeing with her even if he's still too stubborn to actually admit it.

"I can call Phil and have him yell at you if you want." Tilly goes and sits in the armchair next to the bed. "You know, for old times' sake."

"Save it for a special occasion," Chris says. He's fighting to keep his eyes open, and mostly losing.

"Yeah, because being a pain to the medical team on the day you get out of isolation isn't special enough."

Chris huffs out a tiny laugh. "He'd call that Tuesday."

"And then he'd tell you to shut up and go to sleep."

"I'd still hate it."

"How about this," Tilly says. "Will you sleep if I sleep with you?" She smiles at Chris. "Welcome to Xahea, where they're all about the whole patient and emotional support is as important as physical healing."

"'M still tired of sleeping," Chris says. Tilly manages to keep from pointing out how he's practically talking in his sleep already and crawls carefully onto the bed (which is sized for two for exactly this purpose.) She curls up on her side and lays one hand out between them, so he can control how much touch his still-healing skin can take. 

When she looks up, he's watching her intently, and she almost loses herself in the familiar sharp, focused gaze for all that the rest of his face is still raw and gaunt. He moves his arm slowly--Tilly bites back a cheer at that much mobility--until the tips of his fingers touch hers, and they both sigh out at the contact.

"Hi, sweetheart," he says, hardly louder than a breath and the words only barely formed.

"Hey, baby," Tilly breathes back, smiling as he loses the fight to keep his eyes open, and then letting her own tension and stress start to trickle out. There's still so far to go that she can't even pretend to see the horizon, but they're moving and that's a success that no one is taking for granted.

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2265_ ❦ ❦ ❦

"Oh, my goddd," Tilly half-sighed, half-moaned as her brain came back online. She dragged her hands up Chris' back and held him close. "You are so good at that."

"Always nice to hear," Chris murmured back as he pressed small, almost chaste kisses along her hairline and across her brow. "You're not so bad at it yourself."

Tilly let herself drift for a few moments on the wave of really good endorphins. Chris coming home almost always meant their sex life kicked into high gear even if they'd managed fairly frequent 'date nights' over comms, but this one was pretty fucking spectacular if she did say so herself. She wasn't sure if she could count three separate orgasms or if she should just count it as one extended session, but whichever way, she was only now coming down off the high.

Even halfway out of her mind, Tilly had stayed with-it enough to know Chris had come hard, too, definitely a little more out of control than he usually let himself get. She kept her hands moving, petting him through the final shudders that she could feel running through the muscles under her hands. He stayed close and let her hold him way longer than usual, and even when he finally eased off of her, he didn't go far, letting her situate them so she could half-drape herself over him. He was always fine with cuddling, but this was more possessive and heightened than that. Normally, they'd be coming up for air, maybe a bit of teasing and laughing, but now he only tangled one hand in her (completely wild) hair and played with how the curls wound themselves around his fingers.

It all added up to a little bit more than your average, excellent round of hello-I've-missed-you sex. Tilly had promised herself years ago to not pretend like she didn't notice things, so she internally gathered herself and said, "Not that I am complaining in the _slightest_ , but it kinda seemed like there was a lot of focus going on there." 

She lifted her head off of where it'd been pillowed on his shoulder so she could see his face, see that he was smiling at her. She smiled back and leaned in to press a quiet kiss to his mouth. "And that sometimes means there's more going on under the surface." She kissed him again. "I didn't want you to think you had to deal with it alone if you didn't want to."

"You're not wrong," Chris said, his smile turning a little rueful, but still open and (she could admit and accept it now, thank fucking god) loving, so she tucked her head back under his chin and let her hand stroke up his side. "Would it help if I told you this--" he trailed his hand down her back and let it linger over her hip-- "was less about pretending things didn't exist and more about being in the here-and-now…?"

"I'm totally okay with that," Tilly murmured. "I just don't want you to be alone."

"I'm not," Chris said softly. "I can see that pretty clearly now."

Tilly wrapped herself around him a little more securely and fell asleep first, but Chris barely twitched when she woke the next morning, and even when she came back out of the shower and dropped a kiss on the back of his shoulder, he only murmured something unintelligible and settled right back to sleep. 

Tilly wandered into the kitchen and found the rest of the fruit she'd gotten from one of the markets. Whenever Chris got up, he usually took over the kitchen and produced actual meals, but she was fine with having something right now. She probably could glance at the newsfeeds, but then she'd be rewatching them with him, too, so she picked up her PADD and started reviewing the debriefings from the latest round of patients to see if there were any clear trends they could work into refinements for the mycelial chambers.

She'd planned to skim the reports, but she was still heads down in the read-outs when Chris came out of the shower, pulling a faded _Enterprise_ t-shirt on over the jeans Tilly honestly thought might be older than she was. 

"I guess we're not going anywhere today?" Tilly pushed her reading glasses up so they held her hair back and tilted her face up for a kiss. She expected a light, quick, hello-good-morning kiss, which she got, but then he came back for another one, and then another one after that, and they ended up with something considerably more involved, with his hand cupping the back of her head and hers sliding up his chest.

Not that she was objecting. 

"Mmmm, I guess we're not, not with that as an opening salvo."

"Staying in would be my vote, unless you've got anything planned that we can't get out of."

Tilly snorted. "It's been seven and a half Standard weeks since I've seen you--no, I do not have anything important planned." She grinned up at Chris. "Po would probably call down a couples therapy session if I planned anything for the first day you were back."

Chris shook his head and disappeared into his beloved kitchen (which Tilly stayed the hell out of while he was gone.)

"There's a part of me that's not at all not comfortable thinking about how much the queen of this planet knows about my sex life," he called. There was a pause and Tilly could hear him banging around with his (hideously expensive) cookware. "Or how young she was when all of this got started."

"Don't go there," Tilly warned. It was probably way worse than he even thought, because, wow, Xaheans were all into each others' lives and sex was not really something they had a lot of hang-ups about. He'd probably never be able to look Po in the eye again if he actually had that confirmed. "And don't ask Pasc about it. Trust me."

Chris didn't argue even though Tilly knew he'd dealt with all kinds of differing cultural attitudes about sex while he'd been on active duty. She supposed it was hitting him a little different now that he wasn't zipping off to another galaxy all the time. 

The day progressed in a lazy, quiet fashion. Chris managed to make some amazing potato and egg thing with the sad scraps Tilly had laying around the kitchen; Tilly read a reasonable amount of research grant proposals. There were an excellent number of nice kissing breaks and a pleasant hum under her skin that reminded her even while she was working that he was home and within reach. Every time he got up from where he was checking in with everyone he knew (and he knew and kept in touch with a _lot_ of people across the galaxy), he'd bring her something to drink or brush her shoulder or hair or something. Nothing big, just that connection, all of which led Tilly to believe that they were going to keep it low-key and chill, right up until she put her PADD down and started trying to stretch the kinks out of her back and neck and shoulders and Chris was somehow right there behind her, his mouth on her neck and his hands sliding up under her shirt.

Low-key and chill went flying out the window, which was absolutely fine with Tilly, as was dinner from the replicator at some random hour of the night. Weird food in bed with Chris was never going to be a bad thing.

"More focus on the here-and-now?" Tilly finally asked, stretching cautiously. She might need to drag herself out of bed and into the jet tub before everything stiffened up and she ended up not really moving well the next day. Po would never let her live it down if she had to cancel dinner because she'd been fucked too hard. Chris answered wordlessly, but pretty clearly in agreement. "'M just checking," Tilly added. "'Cause that was… a lot."

She thought Chris was going to leave it at that, but he gathered up all the plates and things and reached to the side to put them on the floor so he could roll up on his side and face Tilly.

"The Talosians, when they had me the first time--" 

Tilly ground her teeth at that, because it never failed to send her protective instincts into overdrive, thinking about how that species had fucked over two of the most important people in her life. Chris patted her arm soothingly and she took a deep breath and let it all go. _Not about you, Sylvia_ , she reminded herself. 

"They kept trying to figure out how they could make a world that I couldn't walk away from," Chris said. "They showed me all kinds of fantasies and I don't think they ever understood why nothing stuck."

He was quiet for a while then, but contrary to public opinion, Tilly did know how to keep her mouth shut when she needed to, and this was definitely one of those times. 

"Frankly," he finally said, "I couldn't figure it out myself. Once they realized that the generic fantasies of holo-vids were only that: generic, they started picking things directly out of my brain. Things I'd always thought would be exactly what I wanted." He reached out and played with the end of Tilly's hair. "It turned out I hadn't actually thought about what actually made me happy, and now that I managed to find it, I'm paying very close attention to it all." 

Tilly leaned forward to press a kiss to his mouth, because what else was she supposed to say to that?

  


❦ ❦ ❦ _2267_ ❦ ❦ ❦

Tilly can admit she's been waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop more-or-less since she'd gotten to Starbase 11 with the care team and found Chris still hanging on. During the first flurry of treatments and over the months of slow improvement, the feeling of impending disaster has waxed and waned, but never really gone away. She's figured it's about normal for all the anxiety and worry to keep tramping through her dreams, but she hasn't gotten around to doing anything about it all.

What her brain hasn't gotten around to is providing the exact way in which the doom might be manifested, but even if it had, she's pretty sure Spock wouldn't have been on the list of options.

Which goes to show that life really does have a fucking nasty sense of humor. (Chris would say that if you want to make God laugh, tell them your plans, but as she's standing frozen at the entrance to the room where Spock and Chris are having the conversation that's going to knock everything ass over teakettle, Tilly realizes she's kind of furious with Chris right at the moment, so the less said about his way with words, the better.) No one had actually expected the _Enterprise_ to show up in orbit, and Tilly had been out on the test floor of the fabrication plant, clear on the other side of the city when Izz, the lead on Chris' care and therapy team had called to relay the news, so it had taken her a while to get back to the palace grounds. Usually, having all the extra space and staff to help out with Chris' care was worth Tilly criss-crossing the city on the days she actually went into work with her team, but today, not so much. Chris and Spock are deep in conversation by the time she gets there, which isn't much of a surprise (though she is going to be honest and admit that she's maybe more than a little jealous, because she and Chris have not been exactly great with the communicating lately.) 

What _is_ a surprise is the topic of said conversation _and_ the implications it raises for exactly how deep their--hers and Chris'--lack of communication has gotten.

"Say that again," Tilly says, stepping into the room, and yes, she realizes that her voice is shaking, but she can't be bothered about it right now. " _Spock_ ," she adds, because she wants to make sure he gets everything laid out before Chris makes good on the look in his eyes and starts in on telling her why she needs to not listen. She turns her head deliberately away from where Chris is sitting to look directly at Spock, just to be really fucking clear that she means every word she's saying. "You're here because….?"

"I received a communication from the Talosians that they offered their assistance to the captain," Spock says finally. Tilly manages to not blow up about how he looked to Chris before answering her, but she knows damn well Chris hadn't missed how pissed off she is. "The beings of Talos IV are able to--"

"I know what the Talosians can do," Tilly says sharply. Not only has she gone through everything with Chris, she'd gotten a sketched-in backstory from Michael, even if that did feel like eons ago. "They contacted you, _and_...?" she prompts, because there definitely had been more.

"They said they had reached out to the captain directly, but he turned them down."

"Thank you," Tilly says, biting off each word with something close to a snap. "You'll excuse us while we discuss this privately."

At the very least, Spock doesn't look to Chris for confirmation of that, only nods once and makes his way out of the room. The door hums closed behind him and it's down to Tilly and Chris and everything Spock had brought with him in the room.

"Were you going to mention that at any time?"

"No," Chris says. His voice is still low and hoarse, and his diction is less crisp than it had been before the accident, but he can still sound like Captain Fucking Pike when he wants to. "I turned them down. End of story."

"Except, no, right?" Tilly gestures to where Spock had left the room. "They clearly think this is something you should be doing, that they have something to offer you--"

"They don't." 

Again, Tilly knows that tone even with the damage to his throat and mouth that they hadn't been able to clear, the one that says he's the captain and there's nothing more to discuss. She reminds herself that everything about this situation is beyond stressful, that they're both dealing with things as best they can, _and_ that she needs to be super clear about what she expects from him, from their relationship.

"Can we talk about this?" Somehow, she does manage to keep her voice calm and not defensive. "Can we at least consider the option they're giving you?"

"I'm not in any way looking at what they're offering."

"Well, maybe you should." 

The silence after that statement has that particular quality of air after a bell rings. Tilly stares straight ahead and refuses to back down off her stance. 

Finally, Chris says, stiff and formal, "And why would I do that?"

"Because this is basically it." Tilly gestures to him and the chair. "I mean, yes, Lani expects continued improvement, but nothing major is going to change. You can't tell me this is _anything_ like how you wanted your life to go."

"No," Chris sighs. "Of course it isn't." He rubs his hand against the base of his skull; Tilly can't help knowing that that means he can feel one of the migraines coming on. He won't admit it, though, and she's done with getting her own head half bitten off for daring to suggest he might ease off in deference to it. "But that doesn't mean anything will be any different if I accept the Talosians offer."

"That's not true and you know it." Tilly loses the battle to keep control of her own voice, but she can't stop now. She knows the Talosians have never been his favorites, but this is maybe his best chance at taking back his life. It absolutely sucks that she's going to have to argue their point, but she's been crystal clear with herself throughout this entire clusterfuck that she'll do whatever's best for him, no matter how hard it is for her. "You'd be able to do anything you want, no restrictions, no drugs, no therapies, no _pain_."

"Tilly," Chris answers. "You know that's not actually true--it'd be nothing but an illusion, one of their tricks. My--physical condition will still be the same as it is now."

"But you won't have its limitations," Tilly says through teeth she's gritting hard to keep from screaming. Doing this, fighting with him to leave, having to be the one to push him away is almost enough to make her sick; she's not sure how much longer she can keep her composure.

"I'd still know--"

"For once in your fucking life, will you cut yourself a fucking break and just take the fucking offer that won't leave you living the life that has literally been gving you fucking nightmares for a fucking _decade_?" Every word comes flying out of her mouth in a low snarl that leaves panting by the time she's done, gasping for air through a throat that's all but closed up and a chest that feels like one of the decorative stone sculptures that litter the palace grounds is sitting on. 

Chris is watching her with a familiar intensity, and she knows he's seeing all the things she's trying harder than hell to hold back, which is humiliating enough. Worse, she can tell from the set of his jaw that he's going to keep right on going with the argument and she can feel everything, all the tears and anger and fear and sadness and exhaustion that she's been shoving down and away, everything that's been beating down on her since Po called and she'd made the mad dash to the spaceport--all of it, all of it, about to break free, and she knows-- _knows_ \--that she's not going to be able to stop once it does.

Chris must see it, too, because he stops before he even starts. Tilly has a split-second where she thinks she'll be able to pull it all together, get herself back under control, but then Chris reaches for her, like _he's_ going to comfort her, on top of everything else he's dealing with, and it all crashes down on her. 

" _Don't_ ," she chokes out, shying away from him. " _Don't_."

"Tilly," he says again, so much emotion in his own voice, and she stumbles back, away from him, half-choking on the sobs that are forcing their way out of her throat. 

"I'm--it's--" Tilly has no idea what she's trying to say, because she really doesn't have the words to say _I love you but I can't let you not leave me_ , but he somehow maneuvers the emotional tightrope between backing off enough that she doesn't fall apart immediately while still not leaving her alone. Slowly, she claws her way back to a fragile hold on her composure. 

"I mean that," she says, her voice raw from everything she's holding back. "You should go and find Spock and see what the Talosians told him, because I'm pretty sure you shut them down right off the bat."

Chris looks at her for a long time, what feels like forever. Tilly somehow finds the strength to keep her eyes on his, lets him see that she's all here, all of her, every last conflicted atom.

"If that's what you want," Chris finally says, and Tilly makes her head jerk a sharp nod no matter that the rest of her is screaming internally _of course it's not what I want._

"It is," she whispers, and she's amazed that she isn't choking on the words.

Chris hesitates for another eternity, but then nods and turns to go. Tilly holds herself together long enough to acknowledge she's never going to walk by this particular room--nothing but a random reception room in the working part of the palace--without feeling sick and then throws herself out into the hall.

She knows this section of the palace compound like the back of her hand--she might have moved out to live with Chris, but she spent her first few years on Xahea here--and some part of her subconscious gets her to the alcove that's tucked in alongside one of the high balconies. It's deserted, as always, so there's no one there to see her utterly fall apart. 

She's not sure she's ever cried this hard in her life, but that's probably what she gets for shoving down every last negative emotion for the last she's-not-even-sure how many months. She also wishes she could say it's a cleansing storm, but when she's over the stupidly bad sobbing and is down to sitting there leaking tears in a steady stream, she's nothing but a sodden, exhausted lump staring out over the courtyard toward the mountains. 

Her comm unit pings and she reaches automatically to answer it, because she's the point of contact for everything to do with Chris and his care and she's had to answer for months, but then she stops. She honestly doesn't know if she can deal with anything more right now. It pings again, and she sees that it's Po and, well, she might as well answer now, because Po isn't going away.

"Please tell me you are up on that terrace you used to use when you lived here before," Po says as soon as Tilly accepts the comm.

"I--why?" 

"Because I am following--at a discreet distance--a certain Fleet Captain who is insisting that he needs to go see you _and_ that he knows you're there. So, this is me, calling to make sure you actually are there."

"Oh," Tilly sighs. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Thank the goddess," Po says. "He would not take no for an answer."

"Yeah. Stubborn." Tilly thinks she should be feeling some emotion about Chris coming, but really, she's still doing her best lump impression and she doesn't see where she's going to knock herself out of this any time soon.

"Are you going to stay there?"

"I guess." Tilly wipes the back of her hands across her cheeks--not that it matters much. The tears just keep coming. 

"Okay, I'll make sure he gets there without any issues."

 _You're the queen_ , Tilly wants to say. _Send somebody to do that for you_. She manages not to, though, because Po would take that as the gravest of insults. "Thanks," she says instead, because what else is she supposed to say?

She thinks about getting up to open the door, but that's one of those things that she's supposed to be letting Chris deal with; the therapists all insist it's a good goal, so she keeps sitting where she's been. When Chris arrives, he does manage the door without a lot of trouble, so at least she hadn't wasted any energy.

"Til," Chris says, navigating out onto the terrace. The chair he's using is a work of art interfaced to his nervous system. Po had laid out the initial designs and then her little cadre of geniuses from the university had refined and fabricated it. It lets him move based on the neural firings, just like walking and Po's already working on full-body bio-brace that will let him stand when he regains enough muscle mass to manage. He stops a meter or so away from where Tilly's sitting, which is one more thing about which Tilly can't figure out how she feels. "I--"

"Don't," Tilly sighs. "Just--leave it." He opens his mouth to say whatever it is, and she shakes her head. "Seriously."

Chris nods once and lets whatever his point was go and they end up staring at each other for a long awkward moment.

"I need to ask you a question," Chris says quietly. "Only one, I swear." 

Tilly's brain is still doing her best impression of a lump, but she's probably never going to be able to turn him down. She hears herself say in that same dull, flat voice, "Sure." 

"I went and talked to Spock, like you asked," Chris says. "He had a few salient points. All very logical." Tilly holds her breath that maybe whatever Spock said got through to Chris and she won't have to keep putting herself through the emotional grinder that is having to convince him to leave her, but then Chris says, "And one of the things that all that logic brought up is whether or not you can see yourself being able to deal with me as I am now, right now, forever?" and that hope dies.

Tilly lets her head drop down to her knees. "It's not about me; it's about _you_ , what's best for you."

"Tell me about you."

"No," Tilly finally rouses herself to say flatly. "You can't make this decision be about _me_ , sacrifice yourself just to make me feel better."

"If you don't want this," Chris says, "I'll go."

Tilly jerks her head up and stares at him, and knows in an instant that he's serious. All she has to do is tell him she can't deal and he'll go with Spock and have a life without the constraints and blocks leftover from the accident. 

Easy. And yet.

"It's not about me not wanting you," she hears herself saying. "It's about what's _best for you_. I--we tried, and it's better than it could have been--"

Chris laughs, harsh and sharp. "This--" He lifts his arms to encompass his body and the chair and all that goes along with them both. "This is so much more than I've expected--"

"But it's not what you'd have if you went with Spock," Tilly says. "It's _not_."

"It is exactly what I'd have if I went to Talos IV," Chris says, almost gently. "I'd just be covered with an illusion."

"That would be almost perfect," Tilly counters. 

"Almost." Chris is quiet for a long few seconds, and Tilly makes herself acknowledge that he'd always know that. "You've been uncompromisingly honest with me this entire time. Please don't stop now, but if this--reaction is because you don't want this, tell me." 

Tilly bites the inside of her cheek so hard she's surprised she can't taste blood, but she keeps herself from blurting out the almost reflexive denial. It's not that she doesn't want him, or doesn't want to figure out their life, it's that she can't see how that would be what's best for _him_.

"Or," Chris continues, "if you do want it but are afraid you won't be able to continue with all of it--me--in your life. I'll go, and be grateful for having someplace I _can_ go. Just tell me."

"Please don't make me say that," Tilly chokes out. "Please."

"I'll understand," Chris says. "I will--you know I never wanted you to have to carry this. I love you--I _will_ love you no matter what you say--but I do not want you to feel obligated to deal with this."

Tilly _knows_ what she should say, knows that if she says she can't deal, Chris will take the offer Spock came across the galaxy to bring and will have a life on Talos IV where he won't have to look in the mirror at the scar tissue they couldn't clear or need an engineering marvel to move around or be in pain all the time. She knows it will end the issue, but every time she opens her mouth, she hears her mother's voice telling her that she should just listen to people who know better and follow their suggestions because of course they know best. That's not how she's tried and tried and tried to live her life and now, especially since he's put it all out there, she can't make herself say the words, the _lies_ just because she's on the other side of that equation. 

The silence stretches out and out and out, Chris not moving and not giving any indication that he's going to leave until he has Tilly's answer, and Tilly fighting with herself over what to say. She's spent her whole life giving her mother the benefit of believing she'd used manipulation and pressure tactics because she loved Tilly and wanted what was best for her, but now, looking at Chris, at the trust he's put into her and their relationship, Tilly's seeing it all in a new light, because it really doesn't seem like love as much as pride and hubris and irritation, and that is not who she is, who _they_ are. 

This whole situation sucks, but she has, as Chris just got finished saying, tried to be as honest and up-front about everything, all the way through, which is part of the reason she knows he's going to accept whatever she says here. The more Tilly looks at that, though, the more of a betrayal manipulating the truth, no matter how well-intentioned, seems.

Chris is still waiting with at least a surface calm when Tilly finally pulls herself together enough to say, "The truth is that I think you should take the offer." She looks Chris dead in the eye. "That's not a cover for me wanting out of this situation. I think you should do it for you."

"And if I don't?"

"That wasn't an ultimatum," Tilly says. "I don't want out, I swear. I just--I want you to think of _you_ , okay?"

"I am," he says. "I actually am thinking of me; _I_ just don't want to assume things about you." 

"It's your decision, Chris," Tilly sighs. "All of—this, is because I don't want you to knee-jerk it, to reject it out of hand, which, let's be real, is exactly what you were doing."

Chris shrugs in acknowledgement and the silence falls over them again. The evening is settling in, with the lights on the paths through the courtyard below them glowing brighter and the last of the sun catching the snow on the distant mountain tops.

"The Christopher I saw in my vision would have taken the offer, I think," Chris says, his voice low and musing. "Maybe not at first, but eventually. He had no hope, no reason for life." He sighed out a long breath. "I don't know if it's that I lived with that vision for so long that this--" he gestures to himself, the chair-- "seems, well, not ideal, but at least tenable."

"But you don't have to do it," Tilly insists, unable to let it go. She's always been at least quietly stubborn--she never would have gotten to the Academy if she hadn't been, not with how her family disapproved--but she thinks his particular brand of single-mindedness has rubbed off on her more than a little.

"No, you're right. I don't," Chris says. "But it's a part of my life and I can accept that, because…" He sighs. "It's not the only defining factor of my life. You're here, and so is Po and her family, and Number One and Spock and Phil and every single other one of the _Enterprise_ 's former crew who apparently have some sort of rotating comm schedule, because they're all taking turns staying in touch. It's all a part of my life."

"Is that enough?" Tilly makes herself ask. The life that she's somehow found herself in is more than she, personally, had ever expected, but he's got other complications, there's no use pretending otherwise. 

"It's everything," Chris says. "That vision terrified me for a decade, but I don't see it when I look around me now." He edges the chair closer and tentatively reaches out to her, asking wordlessly for her permission to touch her. She thinks they both almost stop breathing until she takes his hand. "I see you, and this life we've built, and I don't have any desire to let it go."

Tilly can't look away from his eyes, still that clear steel blue, still focused and intent despite everything. His hand tightens on hers and she clings to it even as the rest of the world blurs away, because apparently she hadn't actually cried herself out before. These _are_ better tears, though, even if she can't keep up with them and they end up everywhere when she leans forward so she can get her arms around him.

"I see us, too, but I want what's best for you," Tilly says, gulping back as many sobs as she can. Again, it's probably what she gets for not letting all the tears out like she normally does, but hindsight, 20/20, whatever.

"I'm where it's best," Chris tells her, which is good for another gush of waterworks, but that's an okay tradeoff, Tilly decides. Of course, once she decides to go with it, everything calms down and, after a couple of more shuddery breaths, she sits back on her heels. Chris strokes his hand down the side of her face, letting his fingers slide through her hair, and it seems idiotic to move back to the bench. Instead, she sits right there on the ground, leaning against his legs and trying to figure out how to deal with the overwhelming emotions that have been doing their best to flatten her recently. 

Chris not taking his hand away definitely helps with that.

"We haven't really talked about what life is going to look like going forward," Tilly says after a bit. She sounds more dreamy than practical, but she'll be happy to blame that on Chris and his fascination with how many times he can get one of her curls to wrap around his fingers. "I'm not calling us out or anything--just getting to this point has been--a lot." 

Chris huffs out a pretty solid laugh, and she finishes, "But it's probably time we started thinking forward. Or at least thinking about thinking about it." 

"I'll agree to that," Chris murmurs. His voice is relaxed and calm, intimate in a way Tilly hasn't heard in months. Then again, she hasn't exactly been chill lately, not with everything that’s been piling up and feeling insurmountable, so, as always, they're definitely a pair. She doesn't want to lose the forward progress, and if she stays like this much longer she'll fall asleep, but she'll end up pretzeled from sitting on the stone-flagged terrace. She tells herself she should probably get herself moving. After all, they can cuddle far more effectively in a bed--

"Okay," Po says, pushing open the door and stepping out onto the terrace, shattering the peace. "I am so, so, so, so sorry for interrupting things--though I seriously hope this completely charming tableau you've got working means that things have been settled in a happy fashion--" She looks them over critically. "Don't tell me if it doesn't."

"Po--" Tilly starts.

"Oh, right, no, there is a reason I'm here, and it's not to deliver any shovel talks or figure out what happens when I have to make good on ones I may or may not have given before--" 

Tilly opens her mouth again and Po, mercifully, gets to the point.

"So, Kun has his guys who monitor all kinds of things around the planet, because--" Po flicks her hand in an offhand fashion-- "Security stuff never sleeps, or so he tells me, and so he kinda 'overheard' -- she looks inordinately pleased to be able to use air-quotes -- "a conversation between Spock and the _Enterprise_ , and uh, it sounds like Spock kinda committed a mutiny and sent his new captain off on a wild goose chase in a shuttle so he could bring the ship here to, uh, dramatically save you by sending you off to the weird hallucinatory planet."

"Oh, for the love of God," Chris mutters, and Po nods along.

"Yeah, and now he's making noises about beaming back up to the ship and remanding himself into custody--which isn't happening right away because we are--sadly and unexpectedly!--experiencing a planet-wide blackout on transporter services," she says. "So aggravating when technology won't cooperate."

Chris has that look about him that says he's really not that excited about Po sidestepping treaties and agreements, while Po is, Tilly judges, completely unrepentant about doing exactly that. So, yeah, Situation Normal there.

"Um," Tilly says, trying desperately to get her brain back online enough to figure out a way to sidestep the back-and-forthing she can see bearing down on them, at least long enough to figure out something to help Spock. "Can you go, I don't know, be Captain Pike for a little while and sort things out?" she says to Chris.

Po nods energetically and says, "Yes, that--getting your Fleet Captain on is always a good tactic."

Chris looks like he wants to roll his eyes, but only sighs, "Where's Number One when you need her?" 

Tilly takes that for the transition to action that it is and gets herself more-or-less sitting up on her own. Chris untangles his hand, which Tilly thinks she maybe shouldn't be quite so sad about, since he's going to be back at some point and able to pick up where he left off, but fuck it, she likes it when he plays with her hair. The quick, light touch of the back of his fingers to her cheekbone helps a lot; when she looks up, Po is beaming at them, which just is what it is.

"Izz can get you to where Spock is preparing his self-sacrificial departure," Po says, shooing Chris back into the palace. Among his other sterling qualities, Izz will not be swayed by any attempts Chris might make at pretending he's not done for the day, so Tilly is okay with Po dragging her off in the other direction to get the details on the entire complicated situation.

"Are they really all that?" Po asks once Tilly sketches in the Talosian situation. "Like, that good with the illusions?"

"As far as I can tell," Tilly says. "Michael and Spock and Chris and Number One all have said it at one point or another." 

"Never a dull moment," Po says, which Tilly barely has time to agree with before Kun is on the line to bring Po up to speed with the continuing complications from the Talosians, who have apparently been messing with the new captain, too. Po is irritated enough at how close they're edging to Xahean space to tell Kun to put the Council on alert, which is mostly meaningless, but will at least mean that the formal processes of interstellar diplomacy are engaged. Tilly doesn't think the Talosians actually care about diplomacy--and she doesn't think Po thinks so either--but, Po doesn't seem inclined to let anything slide, so there are a few more back-and-forths, increasingly sharp, and then Po is snapping, "Yeah, no, I don't care who this guy thinks he is, _nobody_ is coming on my planet, not with the people who think it's okay to jump into other people's brains still out there running around. You tell me when they're gone and Spock's new captain is totally welcome to beam on down, but until then, nope. And you can quote me directly." 

There are a few more tense minutes, but then apparently half the people involved in the whole wanna-be court martial peace out and evaporate or something; and Izz is comming Tilly to say he and Chris are on their way back to the suite. Po is yelling at the Council but she waves for Tilly to go, and Tilly makes the executive decision to not even try to figure out what the hell is going on now. Chris can fill her in if he cares to and that'll be that.

"Do I even want to know what happened?" Tilly asks, once they're alone and in bed. Chris is inching closer to being able to move himself in and out of the chair, but for now, Izz takes care of everything and then heads out for the night. It's part of the reason things have been so distant between Tilly and Chris--it had taken four tries to find someone that worked with such a personal situation--but Tilly can see where it had turned into more of an excuse than an actual roadblock, especially once Izz had fit in so well.

Chris laughs a real laugh, not rueful or bitter or self-mocking, all of which Tilly has heard enough of for her lifetime. "Let's just say the _Enterprise_ can definitely keep her crown for Most Odd Happenings even with me gone."

"Well, you are a part of this one," Tilly points out.

"True enough." Chris laughs again. "Though I am beginning to think that Kirk is as much of a magnet for the weird stuff as I ever was. "

"A glorious tradition," Tilly murmurs.

"I don't know that I'd go for 'glorious'," Chris says. "God knows what Bob would have thought of all this."

Privately, Tilly thinks that that entire generation of Starfleet command has so little in common with the current situation that everyone needs to let them fade away in peace, but she knows Chris means it on a more personal level so she makes herself hum noncommittally and lets it go. "Spock's okay, though, right?"

"He's fine," Chris says. "Nothing noted on his record, no impact to his career. The Talosians didn't even mess with him, just contacted him straightforwardly."

"Awesome," Tilly answers, smothering a yawn. However exhausted Chris is from the day (and he is, he looks almost gray from fatigue), he's also still wired from all the fast talking he apparently did to head off what was in fact a looming court martial, and Tilly knows the best way to get him cycled down is not to fight it, but let him talk it through. Plus, he's been more engaged with life in the last half-day than Tilly's seen him since the accident, and she can't bear to miss any of that.

"I'm fairly pleased with how reasonable everyone turned out to be," Chris says, which is Captain-Pike-speak for 'Everyone overcame their idiocy and did what I wanted'. Tilly snorts faintly, but since Chris knows she's on-board with the ending, he doesn't take offense. It also feels like a lead in for more discussion of everything that had gone on, but he shocks the shit out of her by dropping the whole subject completely and saying, "There's more to it than that, but I'm more interested in the discussion it interrupted." 

He reaches out and traces a finger down the length of her arm; Tilly's breath sighs out in appreciation of even that small of a touch. Clearly, she hasn't gotten her fill of him even after all the years, not that she's in any way surprised by that. 

"About what our life might realistically look like now," Chris continues, his voice gone soft and almost hesitant. Tilly smiles at him and reaches up to lace her fingers through his. He takes that for the reassurance she intended it to be and continues on, one idea after the next, where might be the best for them to live, what he'd apparently been thinking about him working behind the scenes with one of Pasc's off-planet outreach teams, how that might work with her back at the lab full-time, how Fleet Command might play into all of this, on and on; and Tilly takes it all in with a deeper and deeper sense of satisfaction and contentment.

"You're awfully quiet," Chris finally says. "Do I need to be bracing myself for an avalanche?"

"No, it's okay," Tilly answers, aware that it's not exactly a rhetorical question, not after the meltdown earlier. "I mean, I have opinions on everything, but..." She searches for the right words. "I haven't been sure you really cared about any of this." She squeezes his hand. "I'm glad I'm here, with you, however that looks."

"I am, too," Chris says, which is, frankly, more than Tilly has been hoping for, especially lately. 

"I mean, I'm sure we can hash out the specifics as we need to," Tilly says. "I promise, we can." She moves closer to him, but cautiously. For the longest time, he could barely physically stand to be touched, and then Tilly thinks they both felt odd and off-kilter so that even if they've been sleeping in the same bed, they've been distant with each other. Chris reaches out for her though, and Tilly edges close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body. "I mean it, all of it, everything you want from this, I'll be right there with you."

Chris brings her hand slowly, carefully up to where he can press a kiss to the back of her knuckles. 

"That, too," Tilly whispers. He's very still next to her, but she can feel his attention. "I know we haven't even started talking about what we want us, _this_ ," she drops a kiss of her own to his hand, "to be, but I want to find that out, too."

"That's a lot," Chris murmurs. "A lot to figure out."

"It is," Tilly agrees. He's had a lot of issues with the scars and the physical damage they couldn't heal, but it doesn't matter to Tilly and she's more than ready to stand steady with that. "But we've always been like that, so, y'know, I figure now that we know we want to figure it out, we know the way."

"We do," Chris says. "And it's always been worth it, sweetheart." He kisses her hand again, longer this time, less a peck and more a promise of things--many things, if Tilly's reading him right, to come. Tilly's breath catches, and she can feel him smile against her skin. "I don't say it often enough, but everything has been more than worth it."

"So much worth it." Tilly reaches out with her free hand to touch his face. "Is this okay?" He nods, the barest dip of his head, and she closes her eyes as she traces the arc of his cheekbone. He sighs out at the touch and she has to blink back more tears. "We don't have to figure it all out now, though, okay?"

"I want to, though," Chris murmurs, even as Tilly knows how exhausted he is. And, for real, so is she.

"Yeah, well, fighting with Starfleet wasn't exactly on your daily agenda," Tilly says. "Much less me having an emotional breakdown on you."

"Like I said," Chris breathes, "worth it." Tilly keeps stroking his face, reveling in both the touch and in feeling him relax under it. "Tomorrow, Red?"

"Tomorrow," Tilly promises, everything inside her steady and sure and joyous. The other shoe dropped and it hadn't made any difference; she can deal with anything now. "Absolutely, tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite a fix-it, but not as bleak as canon, I hope. Also, I'm so sorry this took forever--I ended up re-writing it 3? 4? times before I was happy with how it all played out.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, wow, I did not expect all of this, even if I did basically know the outline when I started! Thank you so much for reading along; it made getting through to the end possible. :D
> 
> I have this tag on tumblr, where I reblogged anything that reminded me of this story: [all your perfect imperfections](https://topaz119.tumblr.com/tagged/aypi). Also, please feel free to [reblog the final story post.](https://topaz119.tumblr.com/post/624068588469469184/fic-all-your-perfect-imperfections-topaz119) :)
> 
> Title from John Legend's _All of Me_ — the full lyric is "Cause all of me loves all of you. Love your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections." I'm sure this has been done to death in a million different fandoms, but the heart wants what it wants and nothing else ever came close, so here we are. :D
> 
> I'm [](http://topaz119.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**topaz119**](http://topaz119.dreamwidth.org/) (dreamwidth) // [](http://topaz119.tumblr.com)[](http://topaz119.tumblr.com)**topaz119** (tumblr) if you want to come say hi!


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